What Not To Do

Don't paint your textured ceiling with glossy paint. (Also, don't texture your ceiling.)



Don't hang your ugly light fixture off of a remnant of your old one (which you have textured and painted to the ceiling). You will have to poke a hole in its canopy, rather than wiring it correctly. Not the best plan.

Porch Projects: Cove Wall Base

My last bit of work on the old sleeping porches was installing the cove wall base, which is kind of an industrial material and is basically a vinyl baseboard. It smoothes the transition from wall to floor material. I decided to use the cove wall base instead of a wooden baseboard because:
a) the wallboard was damaged from removal of previous cove base that was in bad shape and
b) mitering corners is not my foremost skill.

However, working with the cove base was not without its challenges. For starters, I bought a big roll of the stuff to save money. That meant I started off with warped product that wasn't able to flatten out because of the cold temperatures (the sleeping porches' insulation is not so great). Had I realized this was going to be a problem, I would have bought lots of the already-flat 4' lengths. Even though these would have cost me a little more in the long run, they would have been much easier for a novice to work with. I had to go back after my initial installation to re-glue the edges that had curled up. If I ever have to install this stuff again, I will carefully follow the directions about using a good straight edge (I'm still without a T square, for some reason) and a super-level cutting surface. Because I was somewhat casual about these requirements, I ended up with some jagged seams. Overall though, the two little rooms look so much better than they did before I started this work.

Close ups of some problem areas with attempted fixes (caulking seams, reglued edges, filled-in gaps in floor tiles, etc.):





Things I needed for this project: cove wall base material, cove wall base adhesive (comes in a tube like caulk), caulk gun, utility knife, good straight edge, good flat cutting surface, adhesive spreader, wet paper towels for clean up, tape measure, pencil

Good instructions for applying cove wall base can be found here.

Into Every Life, a Little Clog Will Form

Mr. MJ's parents were visiting us last week. So that they would have a full Sow's Ear experience, we found a project to work on together: our washing machine had a clog, somewhere deep in its bowels, preventing it from draining out water. Me, Mr. MJ, and Mr MJ's dad flipped the patient over and commenced surgery.




The clog was in the pump. Works fine now.

Attic Fun

Heavy rains + imminent arrival of in-laws = leaky roof. A couple of days ago during "rainpocalypse" our skylight in the bathroom graced us with some drips. I climbed up into our little attic to investigate. I didn't find any wet spots, but I feel sure there are monsters up here:

Ballad of the One Bathroom: Color Me Sad

That thing I said about gray being chic and harmonious and great for our bathroom? Yeah, never mind.

It does look good with a birdie though.