Closet Renovation VII - Tile Removal

Like I said earlier, fewer pictures means we did more work.


This was a little space, something like 6x8 feet. I started to remove the tile on a Friday night after work with a hammer and chisel. If you ever decide to remove tile with a hammer and chisel, stop. Go to the store and buy a hammer drill with a chisel function. If you ever decide to retile a large space, put down the hammer drill and rent something bigger.


I was able to chisel up tile by hand, yes. I just could not get up the underlayment. That concrete type of grout used to mount the tiles to the floor. I woke up early the next morning and bought a hammer drill. I spent a while taking up all of the tile.

Did you notice the new electrical outlet opposite to where the original light switch was?

Learn from me, put up plastic BEFORE you begin chiseling away. There was a fine layer of dust all over everything in the bedroom and bathroom.

Did you notice the new light switch?

Closet Renovation VI - Pocket Door Frame

Here I will install the pocket door frame. We bought a kit for the pocket door that came with everything needed to install the entire frame. The directions of course, were for mounting it as if you had access to both sides of the wall. Remember I am dealing with a walk in shower on the other side so I'm in a bit of a "jamb".

I cut off the top part of the twisted 2x4 and doubled up more good ones next to it. Why not remove it completely? I needed it to hold up the dry wall because the wall for the shower was still screwed into that twisted stud. 

They did this style of door frame on YouTube so it must be fine. Do I need a permit for this? Is this overkill for the door frame? Why is the ceiling not level, or is it the floor? Either way I had to cut each block at a different length.

After much head scratching and re-work, the frame is 85% installed.

 

Now the pocket door frame is not flush with the framing. How are we going to mount the dry wall? (Spoiler:  I don't know I just had to hear about it on the phone while I was at work but when I got home the drywall was installed somehow)

I am giving no tutorials here looks somewhere else for that. This framing was a nightmare. No pictures = major headache. I am also hiding the really bad pictures because we have worse than what was posted here. Framing seems straight forward but framing over our existing, unlevel, twisted, framing was a mess.

Closet Renovation V - Major Demolition

On to the major demolition...


Up until now this was a one person job. I had been away in Philadelphia for work during the entire month of August and could only imagine what was going on. I saw pictures and heard about it every night on the phone. What's done is done I can only push forward.

You can see that I took down the framing and removed the drywall that had divided the two closets. Now I'm going to move over to open up the wall for a pocket door. This is going to be more difficult than I ever imagined and is the next big surprise of this project.

For a pocket door I removed the framing so that the door can go in-between the wall. Ideally, you would just demolish both sides but look what is on the other side of the door, a walk-in shower complete with tiling on the wall. I am not about to demolish that. I had to surgically remove every nail and drywall screw to remove the studs. I did my best to fit the blade of a reciprocating saw in between the wall and the 2x4s to carefully cut away the drywall screws. As an added bonus we discovered that the stud we would have to mount the pocket door to is not only bent but twisted as well. Look at it in the picture. There is a bent and twisted 2x4 that I have to deal with now.

Take another look at the picture but look at the floor this time. Yes, there are two sets of tile and a gap between them. Actually, there are three sets of tile because the bathroom tile was laid over top of existing tile. No, the various tiles are not level to each other so we cannot put flooring over this mess. 

Closet Renovation IV - Lighting

The renovation continues. Let's change out the light fixture.

So this is a simple light fixture and we wanted something brighter and a bit more fancy.

Here is the light switch. It is on the outside of the original entrance. Remember this for later in the renovation.

Here is the inside of the closet on the other side of the wall from the light switch.

OK, when you do a renovation you should expect to find short cuts that the builders made, but this is ridiculous; actually this was a fire hazard. Whoever installed the light just cut a hole in the dry wall and screwed in the light fixture to the ceiling. Notice the burn marks on the ceiling from where the light burned the dry wall over time.

 Here are the electrical wires for the lighting. Fortunately the attic access is right next to the closet so we didn't have to go far to re wire.

 Here is how the new light fixture was tied in to existing wiring.

 Now it is closed off but kept the extra 5 feet of wiring coiled up. Who knows, maybe we'll need it later. (We will).

New light is installed and is brighter than ever. The fixture was mounted to a box specially designed for mounting light fixtures directly into the ceiling without using as stud. We didn't just screw the light fixture to the drywall.

It is a lot brighter now. We have a three-way directional light that can be moved as we need and it was designed for a living space so it produces enough light to get in every corner of the new closet even after all of the shelves are put in and packed full. I know the new closet will eat up lots of light.

Closet Renovation III - Demolition Begins

The continuing series of the closet renovation:  Demolition Begins! This is the easy part, grab some heavy tools and swing away. Just watch out for the dogs!

NFL Draft 2016

With April comes the annual NFL draft. It is one of the most anticipated sporting events in America and there is no physical activity. How does a show about football have higher ratings than the World Series while competing against the NBA and NHL playoffs? I won’t answer that so I don’t offend baseball fans.

To me, the draft is like Christmas day. I feel the same way as a child does waiting for Christmas day to get new presents. The anticipation begins in November or December when the Jaguars get officially eliminated from the playoffs. Then all of the Jaguars fans start to think about what players the team needs to get better. After the Superbowl, each team is in work mode evaluating college prospects and impending free agent professional players.

I tried writing a basic overview of why the draft is so important to football but there was just too much to explain. Bottom line:  the proven formula to win championships is to pick players through the draft. Unlike baseball, hockey, soccer, and basketball, there is no international talent pool, so the NFL has to look to the U.S. for football players. All upcoming football players play in college governed by NCAA rules. NFL teams pick which college players they want for their team based on who they think is best for their team. Again, the draft is important because it is the only place to get players not already playing in the NFL.

Here is the lengthy explanation.

So how does it work? The basic concept is that each team selects one player per round. The worst team picks first and the best team (Superbowl champions) pick last. They do this for seven rounds. Many trades occur. A 2^nd round pick may be worth a 4^th, 5^th, and 7^th to another team. So one team can trade a valuable pick for three less valuable picks. Draft picks are the currency of the NFL. Unlike baseball, players are often traded, not for other players, but future players in the form of draft picks because teams always want to get younger. Many teams covet the same players. The drama is waiting for your team’s the best option to get passed on by other teams so your favorite team can claim that player. Perennial winners are very, very good at picking which players will succeed.

Like the past few years, Jacksonville has picked in the top 5 because they performed so bad the year prior. The current staff tore down the entire organization in 2012. Over the next year, they got a new owner, new General Manager (he picks the players) and new Coaching staff. They cut 95% of the existing players and rebuilt the team and office staff from the ground up. It has been the most work since the Houston Texans football team was created in 2002. They created a new franchise out of the existing Jacksonville Jaguars football organization. That is a four to five year project. Those types of decisions are made after years and years of losing and regression. The Jaguars have not made the playoffs since 2007 and got worse over the next five years before getting rebuilt. That is a long, long time to be a rudderless failure of a sports team.

At long last the rebuild is paying off. The team is on the rise. The offense got praise last year, most importantly the quarterback. The defense was lagging behind and was the reason the Jaguars were losing close games. Much money was spent on key defensive players this off season. Now it is time to get the defensive players of the future. What Christmas presents were in store for the Jaguars over this three day draft?

 

This year's first pick for the Jacksonville Jaguars was Cornerback Jalen Ramsey from the Florida State Seminoles. He was the fifth player selected in the draft. It was the perfect fit of need, value, and player. He was considered the best defensive player in the draft and many considered him the best athlete in the draft, having forgone training for the Olympics to play football (Proof to my argument that Florida football is better than Texas football, Florida has the better athletes and the speed versus Texas which just pumps out football players in volume).

What made this draft special was the second pick, Linebacker Myles Jack from UCLA. He is considered an elite player and many thought he was a top 5 player, but medical concerns about a knee injury meant that he wasn't picked until the second round. Jacksonville picked him as the 36th player taken and they traded their 2nd and 5th picks to pick him at a more premium 2nd round position. He and Ramsey were considered 2 of the 3 best defensive players in the draft.

Here is the complete list of players taken by the Jaguars (note the extra 6th pick was from trading a kicker to the Steelers last season):

• 1 (5) CB Jalen Ramsey, Florida State
• 2 (36) LB Myles Jack, UCLA
• 3 (69) DE/OLB Yannick Ngakoue, Maryland
• 4 (103) DT Sheldon Day, Notre Dame
• 6 (181) DE Tyrone Holmes, Montana
• 6 (201) QB Brandon Allen, Arkansas
• 7 (226) DE Jonathan Woodard, Central Arkansas

No one will know the true success of this year’s draft class for about three years when all of the players have had a chance to establish themselves and play football. That is when the real determination of whether or not the scouts and personnel staff made the correct decisions. In the meantime, it is universally accepted that the Jaguars were one of the best teams in terms of the players they chose for their football team.

Here is the analysis by CBS’ Dane Brugler:

With seven picks, the Jaguars addressed the defensive side with six of them. And of those six selections, five are in the front-seven. Ramsey was the prize of the draft class in the top-five and if Jack is able to play three or four seasons of non-injured football then he was an absolute steal at pick No. 36. Ngakoue is a hybrid rusher who can be effective if schemed correctly as a subpackage player. Day is a penetrating three-technique who will be a great addition to the Jaguars' rotation. Holmes is a fourth-round value who was available in the sixth, and Allen can be a valuable member of the quarterback depth chart.

So where was I while the drama was playing out over three days? The first night, I was returning from a work trip out of town and was driving home at 8:45 or so when the Jaguars made their pick of Ramsey. During the rest of the picks, I was toiling in the sun on a massive driveway renovation. So after waiting five months for the draft, reading article after article about what might happen and who was the best for each team, and marking the date on the calendar, I missed nearly all of it for work and fixing up the house.