Smash 'Em Up's House

Well, it's our first trip to Smash 'Em Up's House, and he had several small projects in store, along with a couple of bigger projects. The small projects included lots of painting, upgrading light fixtures, reparing broken light fixtures, and installing a ceiling fan. But before we get to all that, BREAKFAST!

Tasty McDonald's Sausage, Egg, Cheese Biscuits.


Small Project #1 - Updating Light Fixtures

The only thing more boring than watching paint dry is seeing pictures of guys painting, so let's jump right into the lighting upgrades. We replaced two major out-dated light fixtures. Here are a couple of before and after pictures.






Small Project #2 - Fixing and Installing Things

We made a broken ceiling fan come to life, made a few broken lights shine, and installed a ceiling fan in the master bedroom. FUN GAME: This blog contains two cameo appearances by Chris's wife. Appearance one appears in the following set of photos. Can you find appearance two later on?

Broken...


Fixed...Chris was very shocked when we got this working :)


Pegboard...


Installed pegboard, awaiting glorious, manly tools...


New ceiling fan in master bedroom...


Big Project #1 - Building a Dishwasher Cubby

Chris bought a new dishwasher, and most dishwashers these days are designed without sides, because they're meant to be installed in a unit beside the kitchen sink. His previous dishwasher was vintage and was a standalone unit. Something had to be done.

The new dishwasher...beautiful front, ugly top and sides


Home Depot gave us some extrememly warped wood, but no bother. Here we show you how to handle this. Put a two-by-four on the ground, and put the warped wood on top of it. Have a 200 pound guy stand on the warped would to temporarily flatten it. While the wood is in this state, have another guy nail the wood to a one-by piece.


A good lookin' cubby, but one problem. Cubby should really be pushed up flush against the wall, but the baseboards and power plug are prohibiting that.


Solution part one - remove baseboard with wonder-bar.


Solution part two - drill hole in side of cubby for power cord to sneak out of. (Note: use the side that will be against the refrigerator so nobody will see it)


We thought we were done, but we discovered yet another problem. Due to the warped wood and lack of bracing, when we put the microwave on top of the cubby, the weight of the microwave caused the dishwasher door to be stuck. Daniel really came through with this brilliant solution...shims! Now, we have a fully functional cubby, just awaiting some paint (ooooh, or tile?!).


Big Project #2 - Patch a Hole in the Ceiling

What follows is a step-by-step set of instructions for properly patching a hole in the ceiling. Each step is important, but I feel that the last step is key.

Step 1: Observe and admire the previous patching effort. Honor the sacrifice of time and expense that was given, but agree that you can do better and press on.


Step Two: Remove previous patching effort with a sharp blade.


Step Three: Climb in the attic and install a healthy piece of wood above the hole. Then measure the dimensions of the hole, and cut a piece of sheet-rock to match.


Step Four: Screw the new sheet-rock into the installed wood. File down any sheetrock that is protruding past ceiling level.


Step Five: Buy a brush that matches the stippling pattern of your ceiling, and apply joint-compound over the new sheet-rock.


Step Six: Accept the FACT that no matter how hard you try, you will NEVER get the pattern just perfectly right, and people will ALWAYS be able to tell there was a hole there if they look hard enough (hint: NOBODY ever looks hard enough, except for YOU). Realize that YOU stare at the former hole much more than anybody else EVER will. If you cannot deal with the imperfection, accept the fact that the only alternative is to hire a professional that does this sort of thing 10 hours a day. It will cost you approximately $250, and it will take him about 20 minutes to do what takes you a couple of hours. Granted, when he gets done, it will be darn near perfect. In the end, you must make a decision: spend $20 and a couple of hours for a pretty good patch job, or $250 and 20 minutes being shown how unskilled you are for a perfect patch job.

Me, I'll spend the $20 and use my savings to buy pizza and beer.