JoshPrime Makes Stuff

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 finally figured out how to get to the part of the ceiling I couldn't reach. I know you have been sleepless for weeks worried about how I was going to do it. In case you HAVEN'T (how rude), lets talk issues. The ladder is great and actually is capable of extending higher than my ceiling. However, that doesn't mean much considering there are steps in the stairwell (who knew). This means that the landing and the top of the stairs are the only two places the ladder can reasonably go (without having to build something to level out the steps [also I am really into talking in parenthesis this week. This is a double parenthesis!{obviously. Now its a triple!}]). I just got lost in my parenthesis nest. Don't worry, I left breadcrumbs to get me back to walls. After thinking about it a while, we came up with this idea of affixing a trowel to a pole to allow me to smooth from afar. It is a great idea, but it is not without problems. Firstly, there are not a lot...

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 ...

Hey reader, It is time to play with lights! I finally finished painting and fixing all the fence segments and posts. I got some stuff to affix it all to the walls, but before I do that I wanted to try out my lights! I can't really attach them to the walls until I have the TV anyway, so there are going to be a lot more posts about these posts and also the fences. I bought these super cool lights that are LEDs to run along the cross beams of the fence once it is all done. As you know, I wanted to use the fence to hide a lot of wiring and really keep the room clean. Putting lights behind it only adds to the cool factor. I have one strand and it makes it the whole length. The real question is - do I set the lights up above the cross beam or below it? Below: As you can see, the under light gives the fence a kind of eerie glow under it. It also hides the source of the light which only adds to the cool factor. Unfortunately, I can't get a really wide picture of it without fu...

Hey there reader, When we last left Media room, I had bought some segments of fence and assembled a racecar bed! Unfortunately, the fence is not quite what I had in mind for in the house. It is really rough - which is fine for a back or front yard, but not for a movie room. Fortunately, I have lots of experience in making rough things smooth. I started with wood putty to fill in gaps, but after searching online I found that using plaster would be fine as long as the wood never was outside. When working on the first segment, I even plastered the edges of the pickets. What I quickly discovered is that the edges were already pretty smooth - save for the detail at the top - and that adding the plaster there made sanding it a real pain. For the rest of the fence I only put plaster on edges if there was a knot or other flaw, and also on the detail work at the top. It made the whole project go much smoother . Hey that's almost a pun. Anyway, I didn't bother smoothing the cro...

Hey Reader, It is time to talk color! Now that my media room is smooth and flat, I get to make it more than just a beige box. Every room in this house is nothing more than a big beige box. The builders even went so far as to paint the baseboards, the ceiling, the walls, and all the doors the exact same shade of beige. Who wants that much beige in their life? Certainly not me! I wanted something really bright in the blue family. This room will likely be dark a lot since it will be for watching movies and playing games. Therefore, I feel like the walls need to be bright to compensate for the lack of light. Further, blue will give it more of a feeling that you are outside once the fences and car are in place (more on that later). Before I can get blue on the walls, I need to get the box to be a little less beige. That starts with baseboards. I was really worried about painting my baseboards. It isn't that baseboards are particularly hard to paint, it is just that with carpeting I...

Hey Reader, I know we have been talking walls punctuated by mediocre crafts for a few months now. I have to admit, skim coating has proved to be a very worthy adversary in my quest for smooth walls. I have been sanding and reapplying Spackle for what seems like years. Everything in the house is covered in an inch of white dust, it looks like the home of a stock trader before the internet bubble burst (thats a cocaine joke... did it make sense... whatever moving on). Last we checked in on the walls project, it was a huge struggle and I had made a major error in priming the walls too early. I hate to admit this to you, reader, but I was pretty defeated by the walls. I actually got a contractor to come in and look at the walls and give me an estimate for their services. I had found a website called home advisor that had connected me to some people. Can we talk about that for just a second? I signed up (unintentionally since I thought I was going to get some estimates) and immediately ...

Ok Reader, I gave you a short break from my constant wall talk. Now we are back at it full force. Here is the situation: Wall smoothing has been an insane amount of work. All that talk of rue-ing aside, I have enjoyed it for the most part. However, the epic tale of wall smoothing is about to take a turn. It finally appeared as if the wall smoothing was done and I started thinking paint colors. Since this room is designed to look like its night, I wanted a dark blue. It isn't a huge room, so I had to think about not making it too cave-like. I happen to like caves myself, but that is a whole separate conversation. I settled on a pretty bright blue color. My thought was this: if the color is really bright, that will compensate for it being a room that rarely has the lights on (since its for movies of course). I bought a tester of paint. I have some questions for the painters among us. There are whole aisles in the home improvement stores of paint. I went wandering down their to ...

Hey Reader! We are back at it with another edition of the ongoing and exciting saga, "JoshPrime vs. Textured Walls." When I started telling people that I planned to de-texture my walls, the most common response was "your walls are textured? I hadn't noticed." After I internally seethed with rage at other people's lack of ability to see the thing that causes me so much sleepless nights, I explained that my walls were indeed textured. I then tried my best not to get into a tirade about how much I hate textured walls, and then began explaining the process. I will fully own than "my best" frequently meant a rant of 10 minutes or less. The next thing that people would say is, "that is way too much work you should just live with the texture." Reader, it is like the people around me don't know me at all. My cousin warned I would rue the day I started this project. My parents explained that it is an art form and that I could become obs...

Hey Reader, You might not have heard the news, but I BOUGHT A HOUSE! I am so excited. Houses are essentially giant craft boxes. I have a bunch of rooms I get to create and make into themed experiences and... and... sorry I got a little light headed there. Pictured: My worst enemy I decided to tackle the room I wanted to spend the most of my time in first, that is the media room. I have big plans for this space so get excited! There are many hurdles to buying a house, and even more once you get inside and the time comes to decorate. I was very fortunate that my house is brand new and therefore doesn't need a lot of work. Unless of course, you are me. You see, there is one major problem that I have with this house. It is a problem I have had with every house I looked at during the home buying journey. That problem: textured walls. I hate textured walls. I hate them with a kind of unknowable passion. I am familiar with all the main types, orange peel, knockdown, popcorn, o...