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custom closets and a fat lip

This weekend's home improvement project was some custom closet organizers in our bedroom closet. Having some real closet organizers is a dream that Mrs. Geek has had for some time now. We got ours via mail order through a company associated with Costco. They arrived early this week. Installing them took some work.

It all came down to a question of paint. We had an old wood shelf/hanger bar combination in the closet supported by a sort of high chair rail. The organizers are flush to the wall, requiring all of the existing woodwork to go. I pulled all of it down yesterday, revealing a large eye-height strip of semi-painted drywall (who knew that our closet used to be pistachio green?). I knocked a 3/4 inch hole in one of the walls during the demolition. The patch on that needed to dry overnight, and I didn't get to the repainting job until today.

It all went pretty well, given that I haven't doing much interior painting for about 20 years. I had to sand a few rough spots on the walls... which kicked up some lead dust, no doubt. I wore a dust mask for most of the day, so hopefully the damage (if any) will be minor. I then applied two coats of paint -- one a latex primer, the other a latex off-white top coat. I'm still smelling some latex paint fumes. Again, let's hope that I'm not shortening my life.

After that, I installed the shelves... and this is where the fat lip comes in. Installation was a maddening process because the shelves attach to the wall using two horizontal rails. The plans provided with the shelves only specify the final heights of the shelves, not the heights of the rails. It took three trials and a few holes in the wall to get that right... (it would have taken longer if I hadn't run out to get a laser level shortly after buying this house.) One of the top shelves got away from me during the installation. It slid forward and hit me in the face. Voila! Cut, fat lip.

At times like this, I remind myself that the glass is half full: no teeth were broken.

said drgeek on 2007-11-11 at 10:01 p.m.

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