{"id":34268,"date":"2017-12-12T07:15:52","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T15:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=34268"},"modified":"2017-12-12T07:42:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T15:42:23","slug":"the-hallway-to-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/12\/the-hallway-to-nowhere\/","title":{"rendered":"The hallway to nowhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Home improvement marathon yesterday after a slow start. (The Wandering Monk does not do either mornings or Mondays.)<\/p>\n

In two sweaty hours we insulated the attic above the kitchen and living room — me running up and down the ladder with 12-inch thick fiberglass batts and the Monk putting them in place. Normally my lungs and throat object to fiberglass even when I’m properly masked. But for some reason both the Monk and I both did okay. Any day I can handle insulation without hacking and gagging is a good day.<\/p>\n

It’s noticeably warmer in here already.<\/p>\n

After insulating, we moved on to the day’s main project — or rather, the Monk did. I was of little use other than holding up the occasional 2×4 and being a typical client, providing coffee, food, and both useful advice and useless kibitzing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The project: To transform a Hallway to Nowhere into a pair of closets.<\/p>\n

When I bought the house, the back wing (16 x 24 plus a 12 x 4 added wart, now gone) contained a derelict and terrifying full bath, a usable but hideous 3\/4 bath, two bedrooms, and a hallway in the middle connecting them all. Nearly all of that is gone now.<\/p>\n

My biggest mistake in renovating this house was failing to tear off that entire structure.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t actually a mistake. I thought immediately about doing the tear-off, but between the logistics (it had the house’s only bathroom) and money (never enough at one time to tear down and rebuild that much house), I kept all but the wart and rebuilt\/rearranged\/repurposed everything in stages. It was an unfortunate decision, but there it is.<\/p>\n

Now we’re at the final major construction step. After that it’s just years of finishing work.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Here’s the original hallway (with the original moldy walls), leading to the original bedrooms and baths. This is looking into the back of the house from the living room:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bedroom on the left, two bathrooms on the right, warty bedroom at the end. Why there is a doorway smack in the middle of the hallway … well, ask Jim Beam and Jack Daniel about that. So many calamitous design and construction decisions in one small space!<\/p>\n

Of all you see there, only the bedroom on the left and the exterior walls remain. And the exterior walls have been largely rebuilt.<\/p>\n

Alas, because of all this being done piecemeal and with a “plan” that had to change — and change, and change due to repeated unpleasant discoveries — there’s still this hallway right in the middle of it all. Not what I intended. The original plan was to open the bedroom and have that hallway become part of one large room.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The hallway is now becoming two closets: clothes closet for the bedroom, and behind that a utility closet. <\/p>\n

Looking at this, I’m reminded that this part of the renovations will never go down as my finest hour. But we (and as usual, mostly the Monk) will succeed in making at least a sow-leather purse out of that proverbial sow’s ear.<\/p>\n

Here’s looking down that former hallway from the living room as it is this morning. Closet end wall directly ahead, bedroom on the left, laundry room with bathroom doorway (unseen) on the right.<\/p>\n

No, not my finest hour. But progress.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Having had this unfortunate decision thrust upon me, it was important to me that walking into the blank side wall of the closet to enter the bedroom not look or feel<\/em> like walking into the blank side wall of a closet. <\/p>\n

It’s got to look more like a small (but planned!) entryway to the back rooms. You might note that the edge of the closet on the right has a 45-degree angle to soften the “barrier” effect. And there will be small shelves. With attractive thingies. And yes, sufficient maneuvering room to get furniture in.<\/p>\n

At the moment, though, you’ll just have to trust me that it’s not as dreadful as it momentarily appears. <\/p>\n

Today I’ll be much more useful, and with luck we’ll finish this stage of the bedroom project. Then it’s back to me again, taping and mudding drywall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Home improvement marathon yesterday after a slow start. (The Wandering Monk does not do either mornings or Mondays.) In two sweaty hours we insulated the attic above the kitchen and living room — me running up and down the ladder with 12-inch thick fiberglass batts and the Monk putting them in place. Normally my lungs and throat object to fiberglass even when I’m properly masked. But for some reason both the Monk and I both did okay. Any day I can handle insulation without hacking and gagging is a good day. It’s noticeably warmer in here already. After insulating, we…<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe hallway to nowhere<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-aesthetics","category-home-improvement","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34268"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34287,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34268\/revisions\/34287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}