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the attic, part 3 -- eave closets
"a yard sale would've been so much easier"
Our attic is a big wide
open space that runs the full length and almost the full width of the
house. It's gonna make a freakin' awesome master suite when it's done,
which may or may not be before we retire, but eh, we're optimists.
Unfortunately, wide open space does not equal storage. Would you believe
there's only one closet in the entire house? (It's a small little sort of
walk-in affair in one of the downstairs bedrooms - although it does have a
nice large window in it. Which, heh.) Built-in storage all over the place,
yes, but only one closet. Closets came in the form of armoires and the
like, so there wouldn't have been as much reason to use precious space for
closets.
But times have changed,
obviously, and we need some closet space. Not just for clothes -- the one
lone closet has been serving us both and it's been fine, if a little
cramped -- but we do have a lot of stuff (yes, we heard that concerted "no
shit" from everyone who's ever helped us move, to which we say, "pffft").
And stuff requires storage. Which brings us back to the attic.
The previous owners were
making use of storage space under the eaves, which is to say that they cut
some access holes in the knee wall, slapped a bunch of loose pieces of
plywood across the rafters, and stacked a bunch of mostly worthless crap
under the eaves that we then had to haul out when our
work began. We then proceeded to make them into proper storage spaces
and when last you saw us there, we had put down the subfloors and framed
out all the outer knee walls that will enclose them. And then the whole
drywallling extravaganza began and the closets stayed that way for awhile.
Once most of the drywall
pieces were finally up, it was time to put the paneling up in the closets
so they'd be completely enclosed. Remember that the paneling was actually
the stuff that'd been used for the attic walls originally and though the
stuff wasn't what we wanted for the main room, it's actually really nice
stuff -- the same thin fir panels that are in the dining room downstairs.
It seemed a shame to just throw it out since it's in good shape and as old
as the rest of house, so we decided to panel the closets with it to save
money.
I never really thought
about it until we started, but paneling a space isn't anything like
drywalling it. There're the obvious material differences, of course, but
drywalling is a lot more forgiving. When you have larger gaps than you
might like or don't cut a piece just right, there's always drywall
compound to the rescue and jeebus knows we took full advantage of this
when we were working on the main room. When it comes to paneling, however,
every piece pretty much has to fit exactly right. There's wood putty and
painter's caulk for the joints, of course, but they don't fill in
half-inch gaps very well. No, trust us -- they don't...we tried.
Anyway, every piece had to
be custom measured, cut, fitted, and nailed into place before we could
move on to the next one. And of course, due to the vagaries of an old
house -- what's known in the charming parlance of real-estate agents and
other big fat liars as "character" -- means there are no square corners or
plumb walls. And just because we're never satisfied unless we've made a
job as absolutely difficult as possible, the backside of every main room
knee wall has at least one outlet to be cut into the panel. Good times, my
friend, good times.
The most logical place to
start seemed like the ceiling, and it was. It was also the hardest part
and about the only good thing to say about it was that at least we got the
worst part of the way first. Not much consolation, we're here to tell you.
It wasn't just the working over your head part that sucked, either. We had
a similar problem with the panels that we did with the drywall, i.e., the
insulation bulging out so that it made it extremely difficult to hold the
panels in place long enough to affix them. Plus, the closets are less than
five feet high at their peak, which meant cramped quarters. We finally
figured out a method that involved a wooden school chair that the
description just won't do just to, but I'll give it a shot anyway.
We'd spent the better part
an hour trying to get our first paneling piece up on the first day and
about the only way to do it with the two of us was for both of us to get
the panel in place, then I'd crawl into the center, settle on my knees,
and lean up against it with my back -- not holding it up but pressing it
hard against the rafters -- and using my arms for balance, and then Sal
would crawl around me and get it nailed into place. It had to be
nailed in several places before I could safely release pressure on the
panel and be sure it wasn't going to pop off. But I'm not tall enough on
my knees to hit it just right in the center to hold enough pressure
against it, so I couldn't hold it as tightly as I could if I were able to
get closer. Which is where the chair came in.
See, there's this old
wooden school chair with metal legs we've had for ages. It's charming and
sturdy and makes the perfect stepstool. After getting the first panel up,
we both realized there was no way we'd be able to keep that up for long.
There were 15 more four foot panels to put up and at the rate we were
going, it'd be Thanksgiving before the stupid things were up. We decided
to take a break for lunch and figure out a better way to do it.
I had the brilliant
brainstorm -- and it was brilliant, as you'll see later -- of
trying out that little wooden chair to see if it would help. The way it
worked was we'd both get the panel situated, with the chair sitting in the
middle, then I would scoot around and sit down in it, which forced me to
bend forward and I could easily press my back against it. To put good
pressure on it, I'd then rock the chair slightly so it was balanced on the
back two legs, wedging myself tighter against the panel, and put my feet
up on the wall opposite to keep myself from rocking forward on all four
legs until Sal was done nailing it in place. It sounds horribly
uncomfortable and maybe even painful, but it actually worked quite well
and since I wasn't kneeling anymore, saved me a lot of aches and pains.
The rest of the panels went up relatively quickly after that.
We of course don't have
pictures of our little maneuver because hello, hands full. Oh, Sal may
have said something about running downstairs to get the camera while I was
wedged in there tight, but one look at my face and he muttered a hurried
"just kidding" and went back to hammering. Smart man.
Then it was time to cut
all the wall pieces. They were a little easier in that we didn't have the
insulation problem we had with the ceiling but, as I said, all those
outlet holes had to be cut out, not to mention contending with
out-of-plumb door openings and what not. Despite all of that, though, the
closets turned out remarkably well.
Look at those nice, tight
seams every which way, and the way the outlets fit perfectly. Behold our
incredible photo-touching carpentry skills! Yeah, we
rock.
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