Glamorous Garage

Before

As you may recall, we had a bit of a plumbing incident above the front bathroom back in 2013, which resulted in the loss of the drywall in the garage.  It is finally repaired.

After a lot of procrastination, the first step was putting in new insulation and drywall.  Thankfully I got expert help from my brother back in January.

This photo shows how close David got when eyeballing one inch.  Not bad!  We had to do this because the stupid Harbor Freight drywall square was far from square.

The metal corner piece stuck out a bit, so we stapled some cardboard behind the drywall to bring it out a touch.

Drywalling complete.

After a little more procrastination we added tape and mud in March.

I finally got around to painting just recently.

The bathtub vent was a little rusty, so I gave it a quick coat of Rust-Oleum.

Before 

After.  Yes; only two screws.

And finally, here's the finished product (including a lot of odd shadowing), with an outlet plate and everything.  The cord you can see charges the Plug-In Prius. I got a do-dad that prevents the cord from sticking straight out into the walkway.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find one at Home Depot with an outlet pointing upward.

After

Here's the before shot one more time.

Before

It's Curtains for Us

Both of our bathrooms feature sliding shower doors on the tubs.  As my mother pointed out, they tend to make life miserable, so we decided to get rid of them in the guest bath.

The first step was to remove the doors an the top bar.

The side bars came out easily too, but the bottom piece of frame was glued down pretty well.  It took some serious yet gentle prying to get it off.

Next we had to clean off all the old glue and gunk that stayed behind.

I also cleaned up the holes from the side rails in preparation for caulking.

Ready for the next step.

We got a curtain rod that permanently attaches to the walls, with stainless steel screws.  Tension rods might attack a tugging toddler.  The rod is aluminum, so hopefully we avoid rust.  It is also a double rod, so it can hang towels in addition to the curtain.

Chrissy took this opportunity to re-caulk the entire tub, as well as the holes in the wall from the old frame.

Before

After

We got the curtain and liner at Home Goods for something like $20, and they match the room perfectly.  We think it looks much nicer and makes the tub much more usable, especially for parents leaning over the edge bathing babies.

This project was pretty simple and made a big difference in our bathroom.  I encourage everyone to ditch their dated doors.

I'm happy to report we put the old doors and frame on Craigslist and someone picked them up, so they will get a second life.

Biggest Battery Blues

After just over two months, the lousy battery in our master bedroom fan remote died again.  This time there's no excuse, since it got a fresh battery.  The worst part is I don't see any solution, other than continuing to constantly replace the damn thing.  This is why we went with pull chains on the nursery fan.

Fleeting Fitness; New Nursery

It's been a long time coming, but it was finally time to get our fourth bedroom into shape.  It's been our "fitness center" but it was mostly a catch-all.  Now it's a nursery.  Here's how we did it.

As you can see above, we kept a lot of junk in the fitness room.  That photo was from a previous cleanup where I was sorting my vast collection of instruction manuals.

After clearing out all the crap, our first step was to patch a bunch of holes in the walls.  After adding texture and priming, we were ready for paint.  We went with the same bitch-ass beige we've used in many rooms throughout the house.  Chrissy has a very nice painting uniform.

Here's the finished product.

We were lucky to inherit a lightly used crib from Chrissy's coworker, so I set about reassembling it in the nursery.  It only took me 13 hours.

 I won.

We also inherited a rocking chair from Chrissy's grandmother that has rocked many babies to sleep in it's time.  We helped her get it reupholstered a couple years ago.  You can also see the cellular shade we installed.  It's the off-the-shelf blackout version from Home Depot, which they trim to length in the store.  It is great, and can get the room really dark.  It seems to be made with some foil inside that insulates really well, which helps keep the room much cooler than the crappy Venetian blinds we used to have.

Next was curtains, which still need to be trimmed to length.

The last thing for now was electrical.  We decided we wanted a ceiling fan, which meant more fun in the attic.  Here's the old electrical box, which won't be supporting any fans.

The new box is very heavy duty.

 The fan took almost as long to assemble as the crib.

But we eventually got it.  Complete with LED candelabra bulbs.  I'm not sure what the deal is with ceiling fans and lousy candelabra bulbs, but it's an epidemic.

We also replaced the gross ivory outlets with shiny new white ones.

Now we're just about ready for Hope.

Ragged Rag Top

Our Miata came with a hard top, but no soft top.  Many people prefer the hard top, but it requires a certain amount of compromise if you don't have a soft top under it.  You have to commit to your roof situation when you leave the house, which can be a pain.  For example, it would be really nice to have some shade after a long day of driving in Malibu when you're sitting in traffic trying to get home.  Because of situations like that, I decided to do something.

My plan was to make a bikini top like the one above.  It's light, simple, and accomplishes what  I wanted.  I considered buying the one above, which is basically the only option out there, but the price seems a little high at $345, plus the cost of a "factory front bow," which is just the front portion of the soft top that butts up against the windshield surround.

I planned to do something similar to the above, using the front "bow," but I would reuse the original top material, adding straps as necessary.  It would probably look a little rough, so it would match the rest of the car.  After some searching on Craigslist I bought the top below for $70.  There was a big cut in it and the back window was missing, but I was mainly interested in the frame, which is $600 from Mazda.  I located replacement material on Craigslist as well for an additional $70, but I cheaped out and decided to try to work with what I had.  It would have doubled the cost of the project, after all.

Held together with safety pins.

I tricked my wife and mother into repairing the fabric.  We also concluded we should abandon the bikini top concept, mostly because I'm too tall for it to work, but also because the folding mechanism is just too good not to use.  It may be a bit heavier, but who cares.

With a few stitches and a lot of hot glue, it looks like it will get the job done.

As you can see, we also removed the rear third of the fabric, where the nonexistent window was.

The final step was installing the top on the car.  All that required was three bolts on each side of the car.  Simple...on the passenger side.  Of course, I bought stainless steel hardware.

The driver side was much more complicated.  The racing seat was blocking access to the holes, but we eventually got them in, only losing one washer in the process.

When we bought the car, it came with stainless plates holding the top on.  I cleverly asked for the original latch mechanisms, which saved me at least $80.  I did have to buy the hooks that bolt onto the windshield header.  I found them for $20 on ebay.

Here's the finished product.  Not bad for less than $100.

As you can see, it folds up and still lets me use the hard top.

After one drive in Malibu, the new top proved its worth by providing blessed shade on the way home.  Great success!!!