December. Back up on the second floor, we still needed a mirror in the master bath. We wanted a custom mirror to cover the entire wall above the sink. More specifically, we needed one because it required cutting a hole out for an outlet on that wall. When I mentioned that to a couple of companies, they just gave me excuses saying it was very expensive and it could take a while to do. Finally we found a place that didn’t complain and they did an excellent job. They even supplied a mirrored plate cover without me asking about it.

As one thing rolls into another, once the mirror was in, I could finally fill the hole in the wall between the sink and linen closet with a medicine cabinet. I prepped it before the mirror was in by closing off the back side, shaping it to fit a little better, spackling and painting it. It just took a couple of minutes to screw in after that.

One last thing on the second floor was to put back the air conditioner return grill. We were debating for a while to get a new one because the demo guys just ripped it off the ceiling. But that soon changes when 1) I could find a new one that size and 2) repairs to the old grill were simple. I bent it back to shape, screwed it to the ceiling, put in a new filter (if only temporary...it’s a cheap one) and done. Another thing that was so simple that took me forever to finish.

Now back again to the basement where some baseboards needed to put in. Normally you would install the baseboards before the carpet, which I did for the second floor but I didn't have time for the basement. This worked to my advantage because I need to put in smaller baseboards on the footing on top of the carpet (to help keep it down) so I did these all at once.

Since the carpet was in, the process just involved me painting the pieces before I installed them. That way only some touchup was needed...no need to tape the wall and floor. Once I cut and painted the pieces, it still took a while for me to have time to install them.

There’s one last group of Ikea boxes that needed to be unpacked - the game cabinet. In the back corner of the theater room, I wanted to put in glass display shelves for all my old console game systems that have been in storage for years. The problem I was having with finding the right shelves was they were too expensive (as most glass shelves are), which led me to Ikea, but even there they were either too narrow (10”) or too deep (16”). But I found the Goldilocks of shelves in the form of kitchen wall cabinets. In our last place we used top cabinets, which are 12” deep, for bottom cabinets because it fit better. So I did the same thing here and found the right style to go with the rest of the furniture down there. The problem wasn’t the wood style, but the glass. You see almost every cabinet style at Ikea has frosted glass...now what’s the point in that. If you’re going to put glass in, you should see through it. So there were only 2 styles that had transparent glass and one of them worked with the colors I picked. I was even able to maximize the space because vertical height worked perfectly and since it’s in a corner, I was able to get a corner cabinet to bridge the 2 sets of shelves and I keep all the games and accessories there.

Just as in our last place, I had to customize this by supporting the weight on feet, as opposed to hanging it from a rail on the wall. I did use the top holes meant for the rail to anchor it to the wall. During construction I had an outlet put in this corner near the ceiling for the cabinet lights. It was supposed to be wired to a switch, but as I said in my rant back in July, that didn’t happen. That’s OK...I found a remote lamp switch that I strung to the side of the cabinet. Now the lights that I installed in the cabinet can be controlled with the same IR remote used for the main lights.

January. Technically, once the railing and mirror were up (really the plate covering the outlet), we were ready for inspection. That happened right before the holiday, so I waited until after to schedule it. One more little thing, though. The initial plan of the server room was to install a door after inspection so right now the frame was open. To help the appearance I got a tension pole and hung a curtain from it. Simple. Elegant. Its purpose was only to hide the fact that it wasn’t finished. In the mean time I had to build the DVD shelves.

In our last place I used Elfa media shelves...the media part just means they are 8” deep, as opposed to 12’ or 16”, which is what our closets are. They all are the same style of brackets and standards. The tricky thing was the wood style shelves didn’t match any of the wood I have in the room and they were expensive. So the thing to do was to make them. This allowed me to make a custom length (the store bought ones are 30”) and stain color. Since I have a lot of DVDs, I figured 48” shelves would work on the walls on both sides of the screen, floor to ceiling. 8 per side make 16 shelves. It was easy enough to find the wood, cut them and drill the appropriate holes in them in order to fit the brackets. No problem there, either. But the number of them made this difficult, since I only had so much room to lay them out for staining. I made room in the shop for 8 at a time...and it took forever for the stain to dry, even after wiping the excess off. I was hoping this would take 2 days total for this and it took a week because of the dry time.

Then, quite proudly, I unpacked all my DVD boxes and filled the shelves. For the record, there were 13 banker boxes of them. All stacked up near the window. Just like that scene from the Incredibles when Helen calls Bob all excited to tell him they’re finally unpacked (after living there for a while), that was what I was feeling. I even called Alison to tell her the news. She was just as unexcited as Bob was. To be fair, she was busy to deal with me. Sure, there were a couple of little things left to unpack, but that was the last big thing.

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