Better start from the beginning. The primary reason we are building a faux wall for the fireplace is so that we can hang the TV center over it. For some reason, there has always appeared to be a shortage of studs there. We found two, but they were 32" apart. In between, where there ought to be a third, we drilled and drilled but found no stud. Stud finders were no use because we got the strangest, most inconsistent readings from them. Also, the best way to hide the wiring is to build a faux wall with conduits for the wiring.
Now that the bookshelves are (mostly) done, it's time to start on the fireplace. Last night we erected the framing. Mostly, it was 2x4s, but the center beam is a 4x4 so we can confidently hang the tv on it. I was pretty miffed that Lowes only carried treated 4x4s, im not a fan of treated lumber in the house. We put two horizontal beams, laid flat so that we can anchor it to the wall. It looked like a cross. (Unintentional, but cool)
Once we had it erected and centered, we realized that it didn't quite hit the second stud, like we thought it would. Missed it by a hair. But only one stud in almost 4 ft of space? That's crazy. So nick started poking a hole in the wall (of course!) to see if he could visually find a stud. This is what he found:
"Hey Ang, I found some kind of metal box in the wall"
"Metal Box?"
"Yeah. Right in the wall"
"OOhhhh maybe it's a hidden money box in the wall. Can I lookie?"
*looks*
*pout*
"It's the medicine cabinet, silly."
I just realized that I've never shown ya'll a floor plan of the house so it wouldn't be so obvious that the bathroom is on the other side of the Living Room.
This is, of course, extremely rough and just the first floor. It's one of the craziest floor plans I've ever seen but, thanks to the stairs in the center, there is no opening it up. That little postage stamp of a bathroom is it for 4 bedrooms (there are 3 more upstairs). The bathroom problem is gonna have to wait a while.
Anyways, back to the medicine cabinet. Nick decides that the best way to find the studs is to take out the medicine cabinet.
It's an old medicine cabinet. I'd guess it's original to our late 30's house and it has a little slit in the back of it for disposing of old school razor blades. I had expected to find a handful of them, but I NEVER expected to find this:
Hundreds of them! No wonder the stud-finder was getting confused, it's just a glorified metal detector.
The Good News:
We found the stud. The box cut into it, but we could tell where it met. We hadn't found it before because the medicine cabinet was just at the height we were hanging the tv.
The Bad News:
We'll have to move the right half of the cross-beam and it won't look like a cross anymore and we've got a mess of razor blades to clean up before we can get the medicine cabinet put back up.
I think it's a fair trade. Next up: Drywall
No comments:
Post a Comment