So this actually took place some time ago – about 4 months ago, I believe. Nevertheless, I haven’t documented it yet, and I am rather please with the results. The idea for a sliding door came to me several years ago. The door into the bathroom took up a majority of the space when swinging inwards, and it always hit the toilet. Apparently, DC row homes originally had wall mounted toilet tanks, which have smaller footprint on the floor plan. Or so I was told. Dunno how much truth there is in it, but it sounds a plausible explanation.

Regardless, the door opening into the bathroom was clumsy at best, so I found a company that sells sliding door hardware [Johnson Hardware, out of Elkhart, IN]. Because I had already refinished the bathroom with wall tile, I didn’t want to get into the guts of the wall for a pocket door. So I purchased a lightweight wall mount sliding kit.

With a little drywall, the mount kit, and various tools to refinish the original trim, I was in business.

Post demo, pre refinishing

Now, there was a fair amount of damage to the original plaster, so I took that out some loney weekend in the distant past. I lived with the exposed wall for at least 8 months. Cool and edgy at first… then just an daily reminder of work unfinished.

But, on a not so lonely weekend in the not do distant past, we decided that tackling this wall and the door mount would be an a good weekend task.

Mounting the sliding door hardware

Nothing is as easy as it seems, and there was a bit of engineering involved in out-setting the hardware so that it would pass smoothly over the existing door molding. No prob. I happened to have three blocks of cherry wood left over from the shelving endeavor which where the perfect thickness, and much less obtrusive than a two x four.  A little bonus was that I was able to validate my purchase of a drill press, which was used to place the mounting holes in the hardware itself.  Mounting the rail on the wall wasn’t quite as easy, given the amount of pressure I needed to apply, the angle i was approaching from, and the absolute lack of leverage I had. I vaguely remember sweating my ass off during this endeavor.

The original door is mounte, and now sliding freely

The other thing I was looking for in the slide mount was to keep the original door, and as much of the old feel as possible.

Starting to paint the walls

Painting finsihed... debating cutting a box to cover the mount

The Sunroom, East wall

This weekend we transformed my house into an art gallery. All the furniture was removed from the living room, and all the crap laying around my first floor was relegated to the basement. It’s too late tonight to go into detail, but I’ll just say thank you to everyone who came over. It was fantastic. For my part, the paintings made my house look amazing – and gave me a glimpse of what it can become. Enough of the rhetoric – here a few pics of the house transformed. More to come.

East wall , looking forward, and Katie

East wall, looking North

The artists. Kelly Queener (left), Katie Claiborne (right)

Kelly had come up for a friend’s band, and we figured we might finish up the long standing shelving project. We were cranking through the shelf assembly process. We were quite enamoured with the makeshift clamps  engineered out of 2 x 4s, twine and discarded shims. We repaired a few slats of cherry, re-planing them successfully, and glued all the pieces into shelves. Sweet.

The time had come to check the joists in the ceiling above. I should point out that these are to be hanging shelves, conceived from an exhibit I saw at the Tate Modern in ’04. My life would have perhaps been much easier had I skipped that particular exhibit. But I didn’t, and these are to be hanging shelves. As such, I needed to match the support beams for each shelf with the joists.

Stud finder-check. Wax pencil-check. Straight edge – check. We go front to back and side to side (and no the Boyz-n-tha-hood reference isn’t lost on me). But the stud finder is losing it’s damn mind. Clicking and beeping and beeping and… that’s what is was doing, really. Truly. It looked like there was a joist or a cross beam in the ceiling running only about half way out, and then front to back in two different place, about to thirds the way out. We drill a few pilots to see if there’s any grip. Nada.

What the hell? The stud finder still insists that there’s something up above. Kelly sits and stares. She offers a few thoughts. I’m already deeply in thought, wondering what course of action to take. And then it dawns on me. I could sit here trying to be clever all day – Christ, all week, and not get a damn thing done. It’s kinda my forte. But I’ve been on a mission to change my ways.

Fuck it. I see the hammer to my left. Ten seconds later, plaster and bits of lathe are flying everywhere. twenty seconds later, my sisters is fleeing for safety and a mask.

Some joker had just laid scrap wood on the topside of the lathe. To the stud finder, it appeared solid. To the drill, not so much.

I quickly reverted to my overthinking ways, debating options for hanging the shelves given new situation.  No true joists, nor any true support from the adjacent door frame (there’s one hidden behind the dry wall). And the realization that the support that is present, is there for the turn in the staircase above. Now, I’m certain that doubled-up 2x4s toenailed in to the 2x6s we found in the ceiling could hold the shelves.

Post plaster removal

Even fully loaded. But what about that 300 lb man bounding up the stairs while the shleves are fully loaded? Not so sure. An most definitely sure that I don’t want to be sued by a fat house guest for falling through my stairs, through my kitchen cabinets, and landing in my basement with a can of black beans up his or her ass.

This meant that the shelves needed to be supported from the floor. Sigh. I had to order more cherry wood. Fortunately, I found Fingerlelumber, who were pretty fanastic. I had my cherry 2x6s on my doorstep 3 days later.

And that’s where we stand today. The weekend ran out, Kelly went home, and I had to return to writing proposals for work. But I’m pretty damn glad I didn’t :

1. Obsess about what to do without actually doing anything.
2. Try to hang the shelves without inspecting the insides of the ceiling.
3. Glue on the support beams before opening up the ceiling.
4. Freak the fuck out, becuase the kitchen shelves still aren’t done.

I can promise that two of the four list items will never occur. The other two, all bets are off.

But for the first time in quite a while, I have a clear idea of what needs to happen next, and exactly what the difficulties will be. I can probably even tackle ‘em this weekend. Maybe. The front and back yard both seem to call for my attention.