It's cliché, but...

....why do things never quite turn out the way you envisioned them? Now, granted, the only thing not conforming to my "vision" of the new water heater closet door is the fact that the piece of plywood I used is bowed in the middle, so it doesn't hang flat. Other than that, it's exactly as I imagined.

At least for a time.

You see, I have one of "those" houses. Yes. If you have lived in Austin for any length of time you know the houses I mean.

Nash, Phillips, Copus. NPC Homes. Over the years I've heard Not Properly Constructed; Nails, Paper, and Cardboard; Never Pays Contractors, and my own addition, after having lived in one for 20+ years....

Nothing Per Code.

Just as an example. Studs are supposed to be 16 inches on center apart, yes?  That's fairly standard everywhere in the US, I think (one of my legion of readers *cough*) can correct me if not). Not in this subdivision, baby. They're 22 inches on center. yep. How, you ask innocently, given Austin's totalitarian code enforcement, did they get away with this?  First off, the Code Regime, as I like to call it, is relatively recent, secondly, this development was outside the city limits at the time it was built.

There are lots of other little goodies lurking, too For instance, only one outlet per wall, even on the long living room walls; when the plumber roughed in the soil pipe (the pipe everything goes down from the toilet), it was too high, not to mention off-center, so he just heated and squinched and bent the pipe until the flange was close to the floor and roughly centered between the tub and the vanity. Always wondered why the fleepin' potty rocked.  Discovered this when we pulled the commode out to remove the (cheap-ass) stick-on tile and paint the bathroom floor. We had to hire a plumber to cut the pipe down and add a new flange. So the pot doesn't do the boogie any more, but it is off-center.

The bathtub drain is not installed properly and so was overflowing into the dining room for years and we didn't know it--there's a divot in the concrete slab that was covered up by the carpet. We've since removed the carpet, but haven't had the $$ to completely redo the plumbing in that bath yet. One day.

So, back to the original story. You would expect the header on top of the water heater closet to be a 2x4 all the way across, yes?  In NPC's world apparently not. When I put the big lag hook in on the right side, all was good. Same height on the left...didn't hit wood for 2 inches. They'd just built a box with sheetrock around...oh, whatever..... ggggrrrrr Hell, even the fact that the gas dryer, water heater and furnace are all in the garage is a code violation. Well, not anymore, since this half of the garage has been enclosed as my studio (and yes, I did pull a permit for that).

The plywood is slowly straightening out as it hangs and eventually I will rehang it properly with hinges, but for now, the closet has a door and I'm not losing coolth out of my studio quite as rapidly as I was.

Not sure I should post too much about all this. The Code Regime doesn't care if your "violations" are ages old or from before the area was annexed--or even unfixable (I mean, how the hell would anyone be able to fix the stud issue, sanely?), they'll try to ding you $2K per violation, per day until you fix them. Yeah, nice, eh?  Fortunately, they --for time being at least-- only work on a complaint basis.

DIY-ness

Today, I FINALLY made the door for the water heater closet. YAY me!  Okay, so I haven't hung it yet, but it's done, complete with the vent in the bottom. It's not going to be on hinges, but hung from the top on hooks.  Trust me, it'll work. 

While I was putting away my jigsaw, all the little blades were slipping out of the original packaging and I thought, Ooh! I can put those in this Mentos container...perfect size! But then I got to thinking, after a bit, the printing on them...you know, the printing that tells you what each little blade is for and if you use the wrong blade it'll make your project look like mako sharks in heat made it? yeah, that printing, will eventually wear off. So. Ages old fingernail polish that my manicurist gave me $%# years ago to do craft projects with came to the rescue.

I dabbed a bit of the color next to the blade description on the card, and then some on the shank of the blade, a different color for each type. Once they're dry then they'll go in the Mentos thingy.