Happy to report that the first phase of dealing with damage wrought by one helluva winter is done. That is, I had 2 closets paneled, which considerably improved the appearance of both closets and covered up the mess that remained after I peeled off dampened, old wallpaper that had started coming up.

Here's what the outer wall of my spare bedroom closet looked like after I peeled off 2 layers of old wallpaper, covered by paint:


What a mess, huh? This is the wall on the west-facing exterior wall of the house which was damaged by ice dam water infiltration.

Here's what it looked like after my carpenter got done with it today:




Bigimprovement, no? And here's the opposite end of this small closet, where I have some shelving:



This closet cost me $287 and my downstairs hall closet, a little bigger, cost me $356, materials included.

I want to paint the ceiling and trim before loading everything back in there. (It's amazing how much stuff a closet holds.)But I guess I won't paint the shelves since I've found that latex paint on doors or shelves is kind of tacky and things stick to it, and i don't like the cleanup involved with oil paint.

Next job for this guy is actually an assortment of 4 smaller job involving:
1. Replacing a piece of formerly wet sheetrock with pine, above my kitchen door.
2. Cutting a circular piece of pine to fit and cover a hole cut in my downstairs closet door where the dryer hose used to go. The washer/dryer are in the basement now and i don't want the cold air coming up through that vent anymore.
3. Fixing a deadbolt lock on my basement/garage door that doesn't close properly becus the house settled.
4. Cementing in an area of wall between garage and basement that apparently someone drove into and bricked over very unevenly and not very well. It's hard not to notice as it's right by the door and I don't want questions raised by potential buyers when I sell this place.

The big job is to have him do real wood paneling on the north walls of my living room and dining room. That would hide a lot of wall imperfections and also look quite nice.

Since I had to hang around while this guy was doing my closet, I decided to put in a few extra hours of work for my mostly-remote job writing for this news website. I put in 5 hours, for an extra $125. Too cold to do anything out in the yard yet, anyway. I'll be busy with outdoor stuff soon enough.