The studio is a small (about 175 square foot) building at the far end of the compound. When we moved here, it just had plywood exterior walls and bare studs on the interior, with a plywood floor. One of my first projects was to fix it up, thinking that the Hired Hand or one of our offspring might want to stay in it. I figured out a way to shoehorn a bathroom in it. I also made it the place for all the solar equipment, since everything around the main house is heavily shaded by huge trees. That meant burying about 350 feet of electrical cable, but it was worth it.
I wired up the studio. That project was almost without incident except that I didn’t have most of my tools, and bought a cheap spade bit that made drilling through the studs seem like tunneling with a soup spoon.
One of the first things I did after moving here was order the lumber, plumbing parts, and fixtures to put in proper ceilings and the bathroom. My plan was to have the place habitable by the end of September, 2024. Right. It’s now 2026 and it still isn’t done, and we have guests coming on Saturday that might want to stay there. I’m “this close” to being finished, but the project seems truly cursed.
Most of the delay came about because there were just too many more important things to do, like getting electricity to the house and garage. That’s been done for a while, though. Here are things that have happened:
I ended up contracting out the drywall, plumbing, and flooring, and that went well until the contractor got his hand stuck in a hole in the wall after a tool fell behind the drywall and he tried to retrieve it. A minor problem that just required the we cut a new hole into our just-finished walls.
It took the Hand and I two days to install the toilet. First, the bathroom is tiny and it’s really hard to work in it. The toilet also came improperly assembled so that it leaked after we got it in. We had also somehow installed the flange too low.
Shortly after we got the toilet installed, the GFCI that I had installed for the bidet seat — and which also controlled the wiring for the other bathroom plug and the porch light — failed. That’s when I realized that I had placed it in a really tight spot between the toilet tank and the adjacent wall. Remember, when I wired the place the bathroom hadn’t yet been built. Getting the old one out was darned near impossible, and the new one isn’t properly seated in the wall box yet. I suspect I’m going to have to take the tank off the toilet just to get the GFCI back in place.
I bought a two-handle faucet for the sink, but the sink I got only had a hole for a single-handle faucet. I found a single-handle faucet at a ReStore on the island, but when I put it in I discovered that the permanently-attached supply lines were too short. Next I discovered that the drain pipe for the sink is too low, so I’m going to have to extend the drain (meaning a trip down the mountain for the pipe). Today I tried to install a ceiling lamp I bought from Amazon that got lost in shipping and arrived months late. I put it on a shelf until today, when I thought installing it would give me something to do until tomorrow when I can get to the hardware store for the sink drain. Alas, it had the wrong screws with it so I can’t actually attach the fixture to the ceiling.
At least I can pick up the proper screws when I’m buying the drain parts.
Okay, what can be simpler than installing the toilet paper roll holder? Well, I got out the holder, which I believe is one of the things I bought back in August 2024. It was still sealed in the box, but when I opened it I found that the inner packaging had been opened and the hardware removed.
Cursed.
I thought I’d try for one more little project and put the doorknob on the bathroom door.
Success!
—2p