The Powder Room - Dean's Story

Phase 2 is finally over. Well, almost. 99.8% over. We still need to get custom door trim for the hall, but other than that, place a ‘check’ in the boxes next to the ‘Powder Room’ and the ‘Office Nook’. We’re due for an extended vacay—maybe until August or September—and then it’s on to the main bathroom.



The 99.8% completed powder

room.



Phase 2 increased my limited DIY knowledge base. Phase 2 was the first time I framed a door, the first time I finished gyp board, the first time I laid tile, and the first time I hung crown molding. Phase 2 also humbled my DIY capabilities—it was the first time I framed a door, the first time I finished gyp board, the first time I laid tile, and the first time I hung crown molding.

Everything about Phase 2 was an experience for us, good or bad. But now that it is finally over, we’re happy with our accomplishments and the final product. Andi grades the projects as a B+ for the powder room and an A- for the office nook. I grade them “tear my hair out” and “a minor pain in the ass” respectively.

I noted the difficulties I had framing the door and alcove in an earlier blog. Not only did I contend with double wall and 2x3 actual stud size issues, but I learned rough framing plays a huge part in finishing walls (duh). Out-of-level studs made attaching gyp board extremely messy. Once I screwed the gyp board to the studs, the gyp rolled and dipped like the Marin headlands, which made finishing the gyp board sketchy at best.

Taping the gyp board was simple. Mudding (spreading the joint compound over the taped joints and filling the screw holes) and sanding was not so much. Applying the joint compound consistently and evenly was a skillset I barely learned, partially because the gyp board was never flat enough for an even coat of the compound and mostly because I struggled at it. And I never really mastered the “wet sand” technique so it seemed like I spent hours sanding, re-applying the compound after we over-sanded, and sanding again. So I asked Andi to do it instead. She fared better (much better) but also shared in my frustrations.

Typically architects specify gyp board finish on a rating system. Our rating system looked like this:

·      Level 1 - total crap

·      Level 2 - OK if it’s behind something or above eye level

·      Level 3 - acceptable if you squint your eyes slightly

·      Level 4 - done because I’m not doing it again

·      Level 5 - not bad; almost professional

Our gyp board finish usually fell in the 2-4 range, leaning toward Level 4. But there was a fair share of Level 5 and we pretty much got rid of all of the Level 1 areas.

Our powder room is not a rectangle—there is an alcove where the existing door frame used to reside. Although the alcove looks pretty cool now that the bathroom is finished, and gives the user a nice cozy feeling when inside, installing base molding was difficult—mostly because I routinely made incorrect measurements. In truth, installation is a simple process if you have the right tools: a miter saw, a tape measure, a pencil, some finish nails… yep, that’s about it. Unfortunately I am still an apprentice with the complicated tool called the tape measure. I poorly measured and incorrectly cut numerous lengths of base molding incorrectly and made multiple trips to the garage to re-cut new pieces.

The completed office nook.

The crown molding installation was even more exciting. In addition to struggling with the tape measure, I struggled with the compound miter saw too. Crown molding is finicky—not only do you have to set the miter angle, you have to set the bevel angle on the miter saw as well. Miter angle? Bevel angle?! Complicated. I knew the potential difficulties with crown molding going into the project so I selected a brand of crown molding that makes installation easier—Flipface. The Flipface website has step-by-step instructions on how to install their product correctly. I followed them on the whole, but not well enough to avoid some minor errors. First, I incorrectly read the Crown Angle Chart—mostly because I did know which product I actually purchased (R7048) and cut the first few pieces with the cutting angles for a different product (R5180). Once that was discovered, I cut the lengths successfully and relied on Andi to do her caulk magic to make it pretty.

The one area of the powder room project in which we succeeded completely was the budget. Our original goal, a long, long time ago, was to complete the space under the $8,000 mark (our first-time home buyer tax credit). When we started designing the project, and after we completed a few other projects, we realized that goal might be difficult since we underestimated the costs of certain materials and fixtures so we raised our budget to $10,000. We still wanted to be as frugal as we could be, but there is so much cool stuff out there that we splurged on a few things. Well, the final numbers are in… the total project cost was $8,624.21! We came in way under budget! Three snaps in the z-formation for us!

(FYI, there is a new “Budgets” link on the blog titlebar above where you can see the final costs of all of our projects to date.)

Office and Library in 8 Square Feet



My inspiration for our office.



Part of the charm of our apartment is the long hallway that has lots of nooks and irregular corners. We recently turned one of these nooks into an office/library.

This photo from Metropolitan Home was my inspiration. This Manhattan apartment, home of architect Jeffery Povero, has walls in Benjamin Moore’s “Iron Mountain.” I love how the dark walls contrast with the white shelves. I also love the way that the orange storage boxes provide visual organization.

Dean might say that I “copied” this photo and that I “lack imagination” (in fact, he has said those exact things). Copying is antithetical to his architectural moral code.  I say this office was my “inspiration.” In the end I got the shelves I wanted, and our hallway was already painted dark gray (Farrow & Ball’s Down Pipe). The desk is different from the picture. We are both happy with the outcome.

The office nook became possible when we moved this gigantic door to the adjacent wall in the hallway.

Dean screws together the shelves. The wall on the right on the office nook is new--built to expend the

bathroom by 8 inches.

Looking up at the shelves.

After getting a quote from a cabinet-maker-friend for $1,600 to build the shelves, Dean decided to build them himself. (No offense to our friend, I am sure he would have done a spectacular job, but we are on a budget).

Dean bought $200 in wood at Home Depot and bolted 1x2”’s into the walls on three sides of the nook to create a structural frame. Then he cut plywood to fit, and screwed it on top and bottom of the 3-sided frames he already installed. He cut 2.5 inch strips of smooth architectural plywood and affixed those strips to the front of the shelves with Liquid Nails as the faceplates. I was the master sander and painter (the shelves are the same color as all woodwork in our apartment—Halo by C2 Paint). We puttied screw holes and little gaps between the faceplates and plywood with acrylic putty, then sanded it down and re-painted. It took two full days to cut, build, sand, paint, putty, re-sand and re-paint these 4 shelves.

The completed office. The top shelf turns a corner and rests on top of the new bathroom bump-out. Dean

"styled" it in red.

Some elements of the office are responses to the bathroom right next door. For example, the top shelf wraps around the corner. It rests on a new bumped-out wall we built to make the bathroom large enough for a sink and toilet.  The wrapped shelf hopefully makes that wall, which is the height of the door that used to be there, seem more incorporated with the overall design.  In addition, when we built the bathroom we needed to add an exposed, industrial-looking vent pipe that runs across the office nook. Our second hope was that our modern office design would make that pipe look less jarring. 

The lighthouse light.

We hired an electrician to work on the bathroom, and while he was here we had him add the white lighthouse wall sconce in the office area (cost: $112 with dimmer switch). We also had the electrician add electrical outlets near the floor for our laptops and printer. The cost of the electrician for this job was $842.

Our carrera marble desk. It is a really cozy and luxurious place to check email.

In every project I have to break the budget in some way. Our custom Carerra marble desk is definitely the splurge in this project. A few weekends ago we went down to Imperial Marble Kitchen & Bath in South San Francisco and picked out a stone remnant for our 42” x 25” desk (cost for marble: $270).  We asked for a special mitered edge that mimics the 2.5” square edges of our bookshelves  and a hole drilled for laptop cords. We asked them to come to our house, create a custom template to our irregular plaster walls, and come back to install and caulk the marble slab (cost: $470 for all cuts and custom installation).  We are DIYers, but we do not care to mess with stone and curvy walls. Total cost: $765 with tax. Dean built the structural frame for the marble slab himself, using a similar technique as the shelves.

Semikolon storage boxes come in amazing colors.

I bought six red storage boxes at Container Store ($130) and Dean bought the black filing cube under the desk at Office Max for $67.88. The chair is from Ikea and I already had it from the kitchen in our last apartment. 

Piggy.

It is so nice to have all of our papers organized and our books accessible, and have a landing spot for our laptops so they are not strewn around the house. We are very happy with the result.

Total project cost: $2,117.