What are your Coronavirus home projects?

Since you're stuck at home, are you spending all your non-working time watching everything on Netflix? What projects are you doing around the house? Or hobbies?

I'm doing some work in our Master Bathroom, which came with cheezy gold trim on everything, and boring maple colored cabinets when we just took the builder grade stuff in 2000, when the house was built. First thing to go was all the gold, just couldn't stand it any longer. I replaced all the door and closet handles, and all the hinges, bath towels holders, etc. with brushed nickel. That took a long time, as I had to swap out 21 door hinges, 6 doorknobs, 5 towel holders, toilet paper holder, etc. The the gold lights had to come down over the huge plate glass mirrors, and finally the horrendous shower door. Being and DIY guy, and not being able to afford a pro, I ordered all the components and had about $ 1,200 in hardware costs. The updated shower door wasn't that hard to install, just had to go slow and careful and make sure the anchors were solid. Then the big mirrors had to go and that was a job getting those off the wall because they were so darn heavy. I replaced those with mirrors from Hooker Furniture that were half the size (three of these total) and installed two new facets in the sinks.

Today I started in painting the cabinets. I cleaned them, scuffed them with 150 grit, and finished one set (there are three total), and the look is really coming together. By end of the week I'll have all the cabinets painted. Last thing to do will be to paint the walls, it's a huge master bath so that will be a 3 gallon job. Total materials cost for everything less than $ 2,400.

Before

Attachment 12892


Currently (still a work in progress)

Attachment 12891

Beautiful job and a big improvement!

Nice job! It is always funny to look back and wonder how anyone thought that style looked good at the time. How were the walls behind the mirrors? Depending on how those big glass sheets are attached it can be pretty rough back there.

My project this week will be to go around and clean and condition all of my leather! I have four pieces and by the end I'll probably need to call you to order another kit. :)

I had to do a little drywall skimming when taking off the big plate glass mirrors, wasn't too bad and I'm pretty good with drywall mudding. If you ever come into the store I built all the walls in the upstairs portion of the shop by myself, couldn't really afford to hire it done so I learned how to do that before there were You Tube videos to show you.

No one else is doing home projects during Quarantine? I can’t stand sitting around, glad Home Depot is open! I put a coat of poly on my freshly painted cabinets today and am tackling new paint on the walls now. Using Behr Marquee paint, wall color is Dove.

Attachment 12918

I just had an epoxy company grind the garage floor, paint with epoxy, scatter acrylic chips, then the next day, paint with a polyaspartic clear coating. It was started on Monday and finished on Tuesday morning this week. It can be walked on the next day, but takes 4 days to cure fully. The walls of the garage need a second coat of paint, but it's coming along. I put three glass doors with interior blinds in place of the garage door years ago and just had a Rinnai direct vent heater installed under the outside window. If we need to convert back to a garage, the epoxy floor can be driven on and the garage can be converted back with just the addition of a garage door. This is going to be an exercise room with a Pilates reformer and tower. I'll keep a bicycle in there too.

I have a landscaper coming on Tuesday to see about a patio. No down time for me, but as a nurse, my job is not in jepardy, so I decided to try to give a job to a local business instead of waiting until this is over. I have no idea how they are being impacted by this but I assume jobs would be down given the stock market and number of people not working.

Attachment 12921I started this project a couple of months ago but the fear of COVID-19 shutting down shops forced me to hurry up and get it finished. The product I used for the wall is ¾” cork from icorkflooring in Canada. I got lucky and talked to an awesome sales lady that was extremely nice and she helped me pick the best product for my room. This project was a learning experience for me and included me taking the wall down to studs. I’m very pleased with the results and I can live with my mistakes. Attachment 12920

Here's a photo of the garage room. Note the depth of the window wells. I built a wall inside a wall for insulation and soundproofing. It worked; the room is very quiet and you cannot hear cars on the street go by. If I had to redo it, I would have contracted spray-in insulation just on the outside wall so I'd have a bit more space.

yes, I found this a perfect time for home improvement too! saving 2 hours per day from commute, and many hours from necessary/unnecessary trips and errands, I redid my living room!, put stones on the fireplace, repainted the room, and ripped off the 20 years old carpet and put wood floor.

A before picture when I was just about to start, and after 3 weeks, I am done today!

Still got 4 weeks to go as now to back to office now, I am looking at the the carpet on my stairs...

Nice job! Looks good! I really enjoy DIY projects where you can see a difference when you finish.

Here are start and partially finished photos of the garage/exercise room.

My project today was repairing my patio, the pavers had collapsed by the wood post and fallen inward. 60 lb bag of sand, some bedding mortar and good to go. Hardest part was remembering the pattern after I removed about 1/3 the bricks!

Attachment 12935

Is it easy to install a door on the shower? Our new house has a very large shower so I think I need double glass doors.

I would not classify it as an "easy" project per se, but it's doable if you are comfortable and used to doing projects around the home. I would say its a step beyond installing crown molding, so if you are comfortable doing that sort of thing then the shower door is do-able. The trick is to order the right doors first of all, I spent quite a time researching them and looking for the correct door. I finally decided this one would meet my parameters and ordered it without ever seeing one. One thing i didn't want to do was get a cheap door. Not the place to skimp and save.

https://www.build.com/miseno-msdswy2...=transactional

Removing the existing door and cleaning the area where it was mounted took quite a bit of time, about two hours. Then its unpack the new door and measure, measure, measure. When you're done measuring, then measure it again. Mark it all up on the tile first, then check it again. One you are sure you have it marked exactly where you want it, then you can start drilling the time and installing the mounts. The screws have to be into wood to hold the heavy door. And once its hanging, then you have to spend some time adjusting it plumb and getting the seal where you want, and straight to the frame. And you want to have a steady hand with the caulk gun as you have to run clear silicone on all the frame areas.

I was very happy with the way it came out, and my wife couldn't believe how good it looked.

My project for this week was to re-organize my office at the store. The back office had been laid out in 33 years ago with three desks in it and I decided last week i was tired of sitting in the back corner with two unused desks and too many filing cabinets in the office. It's just me back there and has been for a decade, and I decided to move my desk to I could see out the window. Plus, the control center box from Cox for my business phone was making me insane with the never-ending fan noise it makes and i had to get away from that. No customer coming in and virtually no phone calls, its a good time to do it. Should take me two days, I thought.

It took me five days!

I removed one desk, one chair, one 4-drawer filing cabinet and approximately twenty lawn garbage bags of accumulated junk in the office. Must have been 500 lb of old files, catalogs, ancient computers, tools, dried-up paints and touch up materials, you name it. All to the dumpster. The noisy Cox phone box and I had a showdown, and I decided it had to live in the ceiling above the acoustical tiles where its fans can whir 24/7 and not make me crazy, so after $ 209 worth of Cat 5E long cables from Staples that was complete after I built a platform for the device above the grids (you can see the wires coming down the wall from it).

Finished today at 4 p.m. It's not fancy, but I managed to do it all without messing up my servers or cabling and now I can actually see a little of the outside world! Now room to walk around and it's quiet in the back, what a luxury! This is the new control center for The Keeping Room and The Furniture Forum. And that's my very favorite office chair of all time, a Hancock and Moore High Back Marquis executive chair in Angelo leather (Black). This is my third one, I replace it every ten years and get the same one again and again. If they ever stop making it, I'm in trouble.

Attachment 12954

Attachment 12953

Thanks. I think I will hire someone to do it. And I will check that website out for doors.

I like that monitor. Also I see you have cleaning supplies. I need to pick some up when I come to order the couch!

My quarantine has dragged on, for two years now I've been doing major projects - renovations. So my answer is relevant to the question after two years
At first I tried to do the repairs myself, since no one can be invited to visit. Then I changed the parquet, put the tiles, installed the furniture in the kitchen, which stood in the garage for about six months. At least I had time to do it. Since it all lasted more than two years, I finished the repairs just recently. My wife had time to give birth to a son, then got pregnant again. Now we are finishing the second nursery. The last phase is buying and installing white doors for home, planting flowers and decor for the kids' rooms