Krista Nichols Strikes Again!
Our former Jane of the Month Shares more Great Projects
Krista Nichols, our Jane of the Month for November 2006, hasn't put her drill down since we last spoke with her a few months ago. She's been plowing forward with home improvement tasks, transforming her home into a place she loves to be!
The last time we spoke with Krista, she had completely redone her bathroom, expanded a closet that was too small, and refinished a table she found at a garage sale. Since then, she has been busy correcting other people's mistakes! (see those projects here)
When Krista's house underwent a professional remodel and an addition, poor construction resulted in a terrible draft in her new closet/entryway. She started to notice condensation building up on the cement floor of the closet. "The cedar lining in the closet started to absorb the water from the concrete," Krista says. "And so started my mildew nightmare."
Resolved to fix the shoddy job, Krista cleared out everything from the closet, including the damaged carpet and all her personal possessions. After removing the doors, Krista pulled out one of her favorite tools, the Sawzall, and cut away at the mildewed wall to assess the damage. What she found was promising. "I was lucky-it was only surface damage," she says.
Our former Jane of the Month went on to remove the closet's cedar lining altogether, and then dried out the drywall with a heater. Once everything had been demolished, removed and dried, it was time to start the repair!
To keep moisture from forming on the floor, Krista sealed the floor with paint. To help with the draftiness of the room, she sealed the inside of the wall with expandable foam. After it had cured, she replaced the cedar liner with luan board. "I didn't feel the need to make it cosmetically appealing because it was a storage closet," she explains. "It only needed to be functional."
With that in mind, she added shelving to give herself more storage space. Then she repainted the entryway with a color that blended with her cherry wood walls but wasn't too bold. The understated color prevented the entryway from becoming the primary focus of the room.
Though she recalls the mildew episode as pretty upsetting, Krista admits that it might have been for the best. "In the end it gave me a reason to re-do the closet for more storage space and remove a door I had intended to take out nine years ago, when we bought the house." On another positive note Krista added: "You can always find a little good in projects that are a must-do and not a wanna-do."
To balance the must and want, Krista told us that her next project was converting a tri-fold CD holder into a fabric headboard.
Good luck, Krista! And keep sharing your stories, we love it!