What's everyone up to right now?

[Whateverist]

There is a good chance the bathroom wall isn't load bearing, but do make sure. Personally I've always hated taping and mudding. I usually just nail off the wall board and then get someone in to do the finishing. (We know a good handyman.) I'd definitely use short sheet rock screws since there is very little lumber to attach to with a pocket door, as I'm sure you know.

[Joods]

Blimey, very sorry to hear that. It's amazing you are coping so well. Funnily enough I have Chrons disease, another bowel problem. Went for my treatment today. I spend most of my day in bed, saving my energy up for the things I must do, and prioritising my energy sparingly among non essential things.

I've just learned to shove my own needs away because everyone else in my family needs too much from me. I swear some days they just don't know how to function without me. I'll be in Florida for a week next month and I will be pleasantly surprised if I come back and my house is still standing

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I want warm weather. I'm sick of snow already. We got hit last week with an "onion" snow. Come on spring and get here already!

[Esquilax]

Blimey, very sorry to hear that. It's amazing you are coping so well. Funnily enough I have Chrons disease, another bowel problem. Went for my treatment today. I spend most of my day in bed, saving my energy up for the things I must do, and prioritising my energy sparingly among non essential things.

Wait, seriously? Chron's? Like my wife, then. I know how much that shit drags you down, dude, it's the worst. Good thing you've got a special someone there to help you; I've been staying in a rehab center with Luckie for a month while she deals with the fallout from exactly that same disease.

Not to pry, but are you responding to your treatment? Luckie's burned through two of the damn things already.

[Norman Humann]

I had no Internet at home. I fucking hope it comes back before I do.

[robvalue]

Esq: that's fine, I don't mind discussing it. I've had it since I was 14. Medication had it under control to some degree, the pain went up and down. Eventually they stopped helping altogether and I had to have an operation at 27. They didn't know if they could do anything until they opened me up; I was very fortunate that most of the affected area was within a 30cm stretch. They were able to remove that part.

Sadly the disease came back to a lesser degree but medication has been controlling the pain much better since then. Several years ago I went through a horrible period where every few months or so I'd feel bloated, be in pain for 8 hours or more then I was violently sick for hours. My specialist at the time was no use and didn't help me. When I moved house I was lucky to get an amazing new specialist who diagnosed the problem right away, and confirmed it with tests. It was a narrowing caused by Chron's scarring which was causing a blockage to build up over time. He put me on a very low fibre diet, which right away stopped these episodes to my immense relief. The area is too small to operate on at present.

Since then, I've been pretty much pain free and it's been "just" the CFS to cope with.

My specialist is so in the ball that he predicted I would likely have problems in the near future, so he has put me on a new treatment to stop that happening. I go to hospital for infusions every 8 weeks, and I'm still pain free so it seems to be working. I'll be having more tests done soon to see how the disease has reacted.

My sympathy goes out to your wife. I hope her treatments go well. How long has she had it?

[Clueless Morgan]

I've done a pocket door before, and it was quite the undertaking. Removing the studs on a load bearing wall requires you to create a throwaway support frame. Removing the studs without damaging one of the walls is also a bitch. You need a dremel tool with a metal cutting blade to try and cut them from the back. Making new headers for the doorway wasn't too bad, and installing the actual door wasn't too bad. That drywall texture looks like it will be tough to match.

I'm 97% sure the wall the pocket door is going into isn't load bearing. For one thing, it's running parallel to the floor joists above, for another there's a floor joist about 4" away from it on the bedroom side of the wall picking up whatever load is coming down from the second floor, is it's all going into that joist, not down the wall. The opening into the vanity area of the bathroom also doesn't have a header at the ceiling which you would expect if that wall was, indeed, load bearing.

As for the removing the framing, I will be attempting to leave the bedroom-side gyp in place so I don't have to match the orange peel texture on the bedroom side. Thanks for the tip about the dremel; I might break mine out and do some feasibility tests to see how well I can cut out a screw without major damage to the gyp.

One lesson learned: don't buy the canned shit for the drywall texture. It only costs like $40 to rent a texturing gun from Home Depot, or twice that to buy one. The result is 1000% better.

Thanks for the tip. The canned stuff isn't awesome, I agree, but I was able to work out a technique with it when I was doing some drywall repair behind and around the current vanity when I moved it. The previous owner, or at least the people that did the previous work, did the most awful repairs to the drywall when they took out the built in vanity, and the looks were compounded by the fact that the side walls are thrown into relief by the vanity light so the horrible texturing is highlighted.

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PUKE!!! The side walls are 90% as bad as the back wall here is. I scraped all that texturing off and used the canned texture to respray in a more subtle application.



This is a better photo to illustrate the remodeling work I'll be doing through:
The wall with the door to the toilet/tub is going to be removed and the pocket door will go across the opening you're looking through here, opening into the pocket that will be in the wall opposite the toilet.

I don't know who thought this bathroom plan was a good idea but they need to be fired - the vanity space here is 29" wide.

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There is a good chance the bathroom wall isn't load bearing, but do make sure. Personally I've always hated taping and mudding. I usually just nail off the wall board and then get someone in to do the finishing. (We know a good handyman.) I'd definitely use short sheet rock screws since there is very little lumber to attach to with a pocket door, as I'm sure you know.

Yup I've not been very busy at work and the bonus about working at an architecture firm and planning a remodel is that watching "How to install a pocket door" videos is almost like research for my job

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Also, I switched out my mouse for one of the extra ones from the conference room and my right-click is back.

[Marsellus Wallace]

just got back from the dentist , it's still very painful, waiting for pain killers to do their magic ...

[Norman Humann]

Dinner, check. Walk, check. Shower, check. Nap... still in progress.

[robvalue]

I'm feeling a bit better now. Getting my chainsaw back into action and chatting with you fine people has helped cheer me up

[Esquilax]

My specialist is so in the ball that he predicted I would likely have problems in the near future, so he has put me on a new treatment to stop that happening. I go to hospital for infusions every 8 weeks, and I'm still pain free so it seems to be working. I'll be having more tests done soon to see how the disease has reacted.

So, what's the name of the infusion they're giving you? Luckie's on one that's so new most hospital staff we see aren't familiar with it, Entivio, and it's working slightly, but possibly not enough, and since she's broken through two other options we're running out of medical solutions to the problem. Right now we're just waiting to see if the next six months will yield stronger results, but if they don't we're at a dead end.

My sympathy goes out to your wife. I hope her treatments go well. How long has she had it?

About a decade, along with a second autoimmune related illness that isn't helping any. I've seen what it does to a person, so I'm glad you seem to be on the mend; it's so much easier when the pharmaceutical stuff works, compared to the other routes one can take. We're only seeing incremental improvement here, but we'll see what happens by this time next year.