Being family sick days, the past two days have been slow and I have been working solo … so it’s mostly been knock out whatever small tasks you can…

Odd Job #1 – A section of the floor was missing in the corner near the kitchen.

I was able to use old oak that had been demo’ed from door jambs for the missing floor boards. You can see the original carpenter’s writing on the back.

Once sanded and cut down the old oak worked great. Once finished it should match perfectly.

With that out of the way all the shoe molding could be installed on the new sections of baseboard.

Odd Job #2 – The next annoying task is moving the above wall outlet. All the outlets on our 1st floor were installed in the baseboard, but for some reason our electrician put only this one in the wall (maybe because there wasn’t baseboard there yet?!). The just go way when in the base and don’t muck up the walls.

It was easiest to cut the new hole in place, thru the base, drywall, and a layer of plywood that we used to stiffen the half wall. Fun

Luckily, there was enough wire to simply reroute everything to the new location.

So here is a good patching trick I just learned. Oversize your drywall patch and then cut the back to the correct size, leaving the drywall face paper overhanging all four sides. Then set the drywall directly in joint compound and the overhanging flaps become your tape so you can skip the taping step. Makes for a quick & easy patch.

Odd Job #3 – Our son keeps tripping over these oversized thresholds so I ripped them out and behold the original transition is not in terrible shape and is pretty much flush. Who knows why the previous owners installed these.

Odd Job #4 – Stripping paint off of the old corner blocks, so I got out our crockpot trick, remember this one: https://madisonsquarehome.com/2011/10/10/sunday-slow-cooker/

Cook the corner blocks, or old hardware, in the slow cooker with a little bit of detergent / soap for a few hours and the paint just falls off.

Wha-La, like new and ready for paint.

Odd Job #5 – the entire room was sanded and then a 2nd coat of spackle…

Odd Job #6 – And finally Kelly did a paint mock-up. What do you think? It goes great with the Kitchen & Living Room colors.

We forgot how long all this stuff takes!