JoshPrime Makes Stuff

Hey reader, It has been some time since we dealt with my sewing/crafting/making room . It has many names. I have spent a long time trying to figure out what work desk would make the most sense for me. I have found many different kinds of desks that I thought would be cool. The issue - if you can call it that - is that most of the options assume that the room has to serve a dual purpose. My space is a craft room and nothing else. I had considered trying to make my craft space also be a sitting area or have a daybed inside, but at the end of they day I already have a guest bedroom, a room with a twin (although it is a racecar) and a couch downstairs. I can't remember the last time I had more than one person sleeping here at the same time as me, so I decided to just make this room be what it is. "Square boxes? But why though?" - Ikea That meant I had space! I have decided that I want two work spaces. This is only going to be one of them, but eventually there will b...

Hey Reader The time has finally come to move the piano into it's home in my living room. It isn't quite done, there is still some fabricating to do, but that can all be done and applied to the piano later, and I am interested in parking my car in my garage again. Let's get in to what I did! This is where we last left the piano. The casters are in place, the piano is painted and it was time to move on to the next steps. Then a truck arrived with my childhood bedroom on it. My folks decided that I could store my own crap, and so I got 44 boxes of toys, clothes, textbooks, and other fun memories that distracted me from piano construction for a while. The next step was antiquing. I never really thought of antiquing as being challenging, but I was having a bit of a hard time. Essentially, you water down brown (or any color you want, I suppose) paint. Then you rub it into the furniture, and immediately wipe it off. In theory, it will stick to the deepest crevices and give...

Hey Reader! I am not quite sure how to break up this piano project because I am feeling a little scattered. Anything is going to be more interesting than 11 months of wall smoothing so I guess I can do whatever I want. I want to paint the piano to match the bench, so the first step is to sand it. Honestly, the electric sander made this an incredibly easy job. I am using a paint primer combo and doing 2 coats of the dark color and 2 coats of the light color. With all that new paint, sanding feels like an extra step - but it will make the paint adhere much better. Getting into some of the carvings is a challenge and I sanded by hand in those areas. The electric sander definitely did a better job, but the smooth areas are also the areas that are going to be treated roughest so I guess it is better to have them done right. It took me a few days to get the dark color on right. The picture below isn't quite the best way to protray how this went down. The top, the decorative bit...

Hey reader! It is time for me to get a new couch. Way back when I moved to California five years ago - wow that feels like not a long time ago -  I bought this off-white leather couch from a furniture store that shall remain nameless. I asked if it was bonded leather - because honestly, bonded leather is the worst. I was assured by their slick salesperson that it was absolutely NOT bonded leather. Well, that salesperson should look into selling sand at the beach because even knowing what I didn't want didn't keep me from getting fooled. If you look at the picture, you can see the leather is flaking off - a sure sign that you are dealing with bonded leather. Bonded leather couches are only really made to last about 2-3 years and I stretched it to 5. I had to put a blanket over the back for a while or everything would be covered in off-white flakes. To be fair, the couch was cheap and I put it through the ringer. It was time to get rid of it. I wasn't really comfortable...

Hey Reader, We last talked about the piano bar back in May ! If you don't recall, I found myself a piano on Craig's list and the very nice person listing it took the harp out for me. It is now a piano skin. Calling it a piano skin is kind of horrifying, so I have vowed to keep doing it. I have been so busy with wall stuff that I really haven't touched the piano skin and have had to park around it in my garage for some time now. The walls are now done and there are even blinds in a select number of rooms. This has freed me up to get my garage a little less full of piano carcass. It is really beautiful, but it is also pretty beat up. Last week, I talked about the feeling of anxiety about starting a project, and this piano has become another one of those projects. In an attempt to ease into it, I decided to tackle the bench first. I wasn't sure I even wanted the bench when I found the piano, but now I have the chance to test out some techniques on a less intimidating...

Hey reader! There are many projects I feel empowered to just try whenever I get inspired to try them. I decided to learn how to make puppets and a few YouTube videos later I was sewing my first one. There are a few things that I find a little more intimidating, for whatever reason. One of the biggest is electrical. I have been electrocuted on two different occasions and it is not an experience I would like to repeat. I have a healthy aversion to doing that myself. You are probably asking: "How did you get electrocuted twice!?" That is actually two kind of long stories. When I used to work at a big box store that will remain nameless, we would occasionally find opened merchandise on the store floor. People would crack it open to see what was inside. Sometimes they would decide they didn't want it after seeing the inside. The worse people were the ones who opened it and decided they wanted to buy it - and then grabbed a sealed one. What kind of monster does something li...

Hey Reader, I thought this day would never come. It is the day when I can call this particular project finished. I will not have to smooth another wall for quite some time. This past weekend was the final paint job for downstairs. pictured: subtle ripples I have learned so much with this project. There are four main takeaways to look at. Lesson one: stick to something until you get it right and don't give up! That seems like a ridiculous platitude - cuz it is. Here is the thing though, it is a platitude for a reason. There were periods where literally everything I owned was covered in an inch of white dust. There were nights where I screamed at the walls because there were subtle ripples that I could only see from certain angles and at certain times of day. I was committed to making it work! Sure, I didn't really have much of a choice once I had done a room or two. I wasn't going to have mismatched wall smoothness throughout my house. That would be sillier than sa...

Hey Reader! Last we checked in on house stuff, I had made it downstairs. I have since finished three coat of skim on all the walls. Since this seemingly endless project is finally nearing its end, I figured I would try a new technique. Why not shake things up when I am nearly done? Don't want to get too comfortable. I have noticed that when I go to paint the walls, I have difficulty with the edging. This is because I am bad at painting, but also because the trim has a high gloss white paint. I don't usually spend a lot of time worrying about being careful, because the walls aren't painted yet. However, I did notice that because the trim is a high glass white (the only acceptable finish for trim is high gloss, and the only acceptable color is white) the wall paint has difficulty covering all along the edging. This has meant that my one coat guarantee paint is great on the walls, except those small areas. It is much harder to edge than roll, so you can imaging my frustrati...

Reader, This has been a milestone that I have been itching to reach for months now. I finally was able to get some color on the stairwell! When we last left the hallway, I was ready to start painting the hallway. I hit a snag though. I couldn't figure out a good place to stop painting. I know we talked about the bullnose corners, but they really made it frustrating. I felt like I wasn't making progress. I wanted to get to painting, but there was pressure to finish all of downstairs first so I could paint everything at once. Finally, I just decided that was silly and I needed a motivation boost in the form of finishing something! I set out to paint as much of the stairwell as I could! Unpainted and looking dirty The Crisp Linen looks so great! It is really amazing to see the color go on. The wall smoothing process is not clean (shocking I know). The color under the wall shows through, there is rust on the tools, and there's my filthy hand prints from moving the ladd...

Reader! I am finally starting to work on the downstairs! I didn't think this day would ever come and yet here we are. In case you haven't been keeping track the way  I have, I just bought my 11th bucket of joint compound. At 4 gallons a bucket, I have used approximately 44 gallons of joint compound to smooth my upstairs walls. I am sure I won't need 44 gallons for downstairs, there is a lot less surface area to worry about. It is so weird to think that there is going to be over 44 gallons of plaster on my walls. My square footage must have gone down. Also, at $15 dollars a bucket we are talking $165 - a far cry from the quote of $10,000 from the contractor! Even assuming it was $5,000 for just the upstairs. Lets not focus on upstairs because now we are downstairs. I have only done one coat across all the walls and team, it is so much easier. I have been struggling with the stairwell and hallway for so long, this feels like a cakewalk. I can whip around the room pretty...

Hey Reader, I fully expected the hallway to be so easy, but it has turned out to be really challenging. The ladder and ceiling drama is only part of the problem! The hallway upstairs is so narrow, that I am struggling to maneuver while I am carrying paint and other things. Today when I was working, I damaged the wall trying to move the ladder around. I spent so long making these walls smooth, and until they are sealed they are still pretty delicate. It is starting to feel like I am pushing a rock up a hill - or some other analogy. I refuse to be deterred though. That rock will be at the top of the damn hill. Is that the logical conclusion of that analogy? Whatever, the walls are going to be smooth. I painted the trim white and the ceiling white. I also got in the skylight and painted that white. I want to get some molding on that and give it a more finished look, but that is a project for after all the house is smooth. I sealed the hallway with two coats of magic paint, but t...

Hey Reader, I don't have a whole lot to talk about this week, mostly my time has been spent brainstorming ways to get my hallway and stairwell complete. You might recall, that I am not tall enough to reach the ceiling in the stairwell. That is rather fortunate because it would make living here quite challenging. However, it is a problem right now. I bought a super big ladder to help me reach. The ladder can extend to twice its normal length, and open up to be an A ladder or just a stand up ladder. There is a shrinkage joke there somewhere but I am not going to try to find it. Anyway, it is great for reaching the walls. If by "great" you mean "horrifying." Fear of heights aside, I could finally get up there. Of course, I can't put the ladder against the window, so there is some minor stretching required. My wall problem is solved. Though the ceiling is pretty much impossible to get to. I am thinking about a few different options. I might try to roll...

Hey Reader, There is only one real hallway in the house, and it connects all the bedrooms on the second floor. Obviously, the walls have to be smoothed out - that is a given. The hard part is figuring out exactly what I want to do to the walls when it is done. I have considered doing some old school paneling on the walls, to make it look really classy. I think it would be really nice, but given the spacing on my doors I think it would be a struggle to get the two sides of the hall to match in a reasonable way. Plus, I really want to do the paneling in the craft room, and don't think its needed in more than one space in the house. Then I thought about doing a textured wallpaper that would add interest. The irony of working so hard to smooth my walls, only to put a textured wallpaper up is not lost on me. The difference being that the textured wallpaper is significantly more palatable to me. The problem with wall paper is the transition. This hallway connects to the stairwell, ...

Hey Reader, I am finally down to the last bedroom that needs to be smoothed. Then the bedrooms will finally be at the state that I wanted them to be when I moved in. This is the final bedroom! I have had three rooms to practice on and so this one should go off without a hitch. Ominous foreshadowing time. The biggest issue in smoothing this room's walls is that this room is WAY bigger than all the other rooms. Not only that, it has two windows (that means a lot more edges) and an extra random corner for some reason. It seriously felt like a month of taking this room offline to get the smoothing done. I have finally reached a place that I feel comfortable with when smoothing. I do three coats of skim coating, followed by one sanding coat. It worked great in the craft/sewing room. I know I shouldn't complain that my bedroom is large, but damn it made things more difficult. I keep hoping that when I get to the downstairs it is going to be easy because there aren't as many ...