adventures in home improvement

i want to preface this by saying that i did, in fact, get the closet rod installed in my closet...

i moved into my house shortly before the bar exam, so i just did the minimum tasks necessary to feel somewhat settled in & left the rest for later. well, later is now, so i spent today working around the house.

the big project of the day was to install a closet rod in my closet. for some reason, there wasn't one there. so i've just been storing my clothes in a spare bedroom (and on my floor, of course), and that's been working fine. but my friend's moved into that spare room, and i'm going to be working now so i'm actually going to need easy access to my nice clothes.

so anyway... today was closet day. and let me preface this by saying that i have plaster walls & that in my closet, i have one straight wall, and one wall that's on an angle. i wasn't sure how i was going to get that to work, but i had a couple of ideas.

first i had to go buy the closet rod & screws, etc. so i went to the local hardware store. i found some hardware to hold up the rod that was one circle thing, and one thing shaped like a U. the plan was to put the circle piece on the straight wall & the U shape on the crooked wall, angled so that the rod could rest on the U. so i bought those & a couple rods, and asked an employee about what to do to get screws to stick in plaster--he recommended pre-drilling & putting in anchors.

so i ended up buying a drill.

so i bring the drill home, and it has to charge for a couple of hours, of course, so i unpack the drill and start charging it, at which time i realize that the drill did not come with any drill bits.

so it's back to the hardware store, where the same guy helped me, asking "didn't i help you earlier today?" to which i replied, "yes... i didn't have any drill bits." "you didn't have any bits at all?" um... no. duh. so he hooked me up with some bits, and i was on my way for a second time.

so i got home & started going. i tried 3 different bits before i got the right size for the wall anchors. i had some trouble getting the anchors into the wood behind the plaster--the hammer just bounces off those little guys... i finally got the 3 anchors in, and screwed in the round hardware piece, flush against the wall, when i realized that it was too high--the other wall has a shelf at about the same height that i'd used. oops...

so i pulled everything out & tried to start over. but i had some trouble here. i couldn't get the anchors to get into the wood... and the plaster was falling, as i bounced the hammer off the anchors over & over again. i finally got them to work, a little bit, but it's not flush with the wall, and it doesn't look pretty. but it held, and seemed pretty secure.

i moved on then to the U-shaped hardware, and got that installed with no catastrophes, but it also is not flush against the wall. i have no idea if there's a way to get the anchors in all the way or not.

so... at the end of the day, the closet rod is put in, and all my clothes are hanging up, so i guess today's home improvement project was a success. it's a little bothersome that it's not in perfectly, flush against the wall and looking pretty, but at least it works. and i'm pretty sure it won't fall down. yipee...