Month: February 2025

Bathroom day 7

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I had big plans for today, I was going to get things done and move on to the next step. My day went so well that I kept a little timeline:

0800 Mr Rainman arrives and starts the Kubota tractor sitting in the yard, it was 4 F, and the tractor did start! The plan was to actually just let it idle and warm up for an hour. He then unpacked the rest of the box that was the pocket door frame. Big surprise, one side of the frame had a three foot piece of board that was warped and sticking out almost an inch from the main runner board. This was not good and needed to be corrected. He suggested (foolishly) that we send it back. I am on a timeline, I have a solid deadline and I will not be deterred.

0830 I realize after reading the instructions for said pocket door frame that we had sized the rough opening incorrectly. We were going to have to raise the top piece almost another eight inches.

0835 This was not going to happen as the hallway light was in the way.

0845 I had to have a phone consult with the wife to discuss moving the light. The problem is that if I raise it up then the light will be too close to the ceiling. It was decided that I would raise it and then flip the light upside down.

0900 While we are discussing this it was decided that I would run a new power outlet into the closet so we could have a closet light. Also, I cannot just run power from the hall light so that if you turned on the hall light it would automatically turn on the closet light. Instead I needed to figure out how to get power into the closet.

0950 It was finally decided that we would run power up the shoe side of the closet. The tile was far enough from the wall to drill a 1/2” hole down under the house. We had already discarded four different plans before this. Mr Rainman drilled the hole but now that we are going to have to run more wire and I still need to run new heater wire to the main service box we needed more electrical wire.

0955 Mr Rainman went to town to buy more 12/2 wire while I continued to work on moving the light. I had a really nice four inch hole bit and we made the hole lickity split!

1015 I went to install the outlet box and it was only a 3.5 inch box. I ended up having to go out and cut three more pieces of wood to make a support to screw the light box onto.

1200 Mr Rainman arrives with the new 250’ of electrical wire. He proceeds to tear apart our rough opening and cut longer legs.

1215 Light wired and turned on to see if it works. It works, and not only does it work but we positioned it directly across from the coat closet. Now the closet and overhead storage space are very bright and there is no need for a closet light. We decide to leave hole we drilled earlier open, until the straw boss verifies that the new light position and lumens entering the closet are sufficient.

1220 We hold a brief discussion on moving all three hall lights higher up on the wall and turning them upside down. One of the two on the long wall would be easy but the other one is boxed in and almost impossible to reach. It would take some more disassembly and a few hours to make it happen. So we opt out of any more changes to the lighting.

1230 Back at the pocket door frame. Attempted to pull the bent board back into position with screws and it will not pull the wood together. We are going to need more force. I take more measurements and decide that the frame can be cut to accommodate a 29.75” door instead of a 30” door. So more math, the frame got all marked up and we cut the three sides to the “correct” length.

1245 Mr Rainman reassembles the rough opening again with the taller boards. It was decided I had better crawl under the house and run the new wire from the breaker box to the bathroom heater. It needs its own 20 amp breaker. Since it was still single digit temperature outside I did not want to leave the house without power for long. I removed the front of the box and jammed a fiberglass cable rod down below the box. I was pretty sure that there was an opening under the house on that side of the box.

1300 I had to crawl under the house. There are a lot of spiderwebs. the tough part is we have a two foot round return duct running under our house and you have to shimmy under it . There is a small crawl tunnel to scoot under the duct but it is fairly small. When I went in I laid on my back and just slid down and under the duct. It was tight but I did not get stuck at all. Holy Smokes! This side of the duct has seen no human traffic since I installed the wire for the new wall oven years ago. The cobwebs ran from the floor to the underside of the floor, it was straight out of a horror movie. I had a hand covered in so many cobwebs I was making a ball of cobwebs with my left hand before proceeding along the foundation.

I was able to spot the rod, attach the wire and Mr Rainman pulled it up. He had to leave early, so I proceeded to get the wire into the breaker box and then run the individual wires alongside the outer edge of the box and make a run at a breaker near the other breakers related to this section of the house. I did not stick all the breakers together, I grouped them by location and then left 1-2 open spots between them just in case I needed to come back and add more circuits.

1500 Power back on and everything works, I have not wired the heater yet but the wires are all pulled and I left the new breaker off. I reread the instructions for the installing the frame. My rough opening is till not the right size. I had to go cut another piece of lumber and tear out what Mr Rainman had done and install the new pieces. On the plus side, I was able to go get a wood clamp and crank down on the bent piece of wood and get it screwed in flat like it was supposed to be.

I was able to get the pocket door frame mounted up on the wall but again I made another adjustment to make the door sit lower. The instructions they were giving me said the door would be 3/4-1.5” on the bottom of the door. I don’t want that big of a gap so I lowered the frame by 13/16”. This has caused a gap at the top of the rough opening. I am merely going to cut a few spacers and screw them in tomorrow, I am not going to tear it out again!

Bathroom day 6

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It doesn’t seem like I got a lot done over the weekend without Mr Rainman helping but the wiring I could do without cutting out the bathroom floor is done! I also spent a lot of time looking at problems and how to get around them.

Today, Mr Rainman came out and we started with him just cutting boards for a couple of hours. I was able to get the chimney wall all covered so that it can now have plywood applied. I needed to get the boards to stick out past the chimney. I was going to just line the whole wall with 2×6 but Annmarie told me that was overkill. So I lined them up every other instead. Of course I had them up for about 30 minutes before I realized that I had covered up the recessed shelving space. So I had to cut out the recessed areas.

We also had to trim some board at the ceiling height, it was going to throw off the plywood. He cut all the boards for the pocket door rough opening but we had to shim one side to get it square, level and perpendicular to the wall. We had three more places where we had to put fill in 2×4 so there was something to attach the plywood to in the corners.

Mr Rainman cut out the floor and we realized that they had cut the floor joist eons ago to install the toilet. We suspect it was the original. Unfortunately, they did not just box it out so we ended up putting in several support pieces so we can install the new subfloor.

I was crowing about how awesome we were doing when I remembered I had to crawl under the house and move two wires into the walls, not just next to them. The underside of the house is dirty and there are a gazillion spiderwebs that kept getting in my face. I had to crawl around on my belly to access the wires.

It was at this point that it dawned on me that we had not yet run power from the breaker box to the bathroom for the new overhead built in heater. I had Mr Rainman feed me the wire and I crawled about halfway when Annmarie came home and said she had a student meeting. I needed to kill all power to the house. When turning off the water or power always check in with your spouse. So I had an excuse to not finish the power install today. Plus, you never know when you are going to hit a snag and the power may need to stay off all night!

I had forgotten that I had tripped breaker #29 to rewire the two outlets in the living room. The cables had to be moved to fix the floor. Annmarie could not turn on the overhead living room light so I had to go fix the outlet so I could turn the power back on.

The pocket door kit was delivered this evening! It is still in the box and will need to be trimmed to fit our 29.75” door. We are going to reuse the original door as our pocket door. I am going to install the frame without the floor roughed in. This will let me move the tile under the door pathway. I am about three inches too short on the door for it to not have a gap at the floor. I will build up the floor about 1.25” and I think I can lower the door about an inch, so now I only have to add on 1” of wood at the top of the door to make it work. The patch job will be hidden at the top of the channel and I doubt anyone will notice.

I tried to get the baby chicks to come out of their area in the coop yesterday. I opened up the door and propped it open so they could intermingle with the older hens. They failed at their assignment. So today I tossed them all out, shut the door so they could not go back and put them in the area below the nesting boxes. I did use the heat lamp on that side of the coop for just this reason. They are only two months old and do have all their feathers but they are not big chickens. This should force more interaction between them and the adults.

Farm 4, Predators 0

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This is a great start to 2025! So far this year the Gingerman has killed one raccoon from the in-law’s front porch, it was eating her cat food. I have managed to kill two out in the barn and just caught one in the live trap. I thought we had all of the raccoons out of the barn but yesterday when I was chasing the cows out of the barn I noticed a single set of raccoon paw prints leading up the hill from the spring to the underside of the barn. There is one more still living in the barn. They eat the cat food and make an incredible mess. They find a high spot and use it as the bathroom making huge piles of feces. Which I then later discover and often they are in a difficult spot to reach or require a lot of moving stuff out of the way. I have a pile on top of my drying wood in the barn and I believe there is another pile on top of old wood we stacked up in the barn over a pass through in one of the hay bays.

I really need to pull that wood out of the hay bay and look at it. I bet about 90% can be burnt and the rest moved into the granary for later use. I was more of a hoarder early on when it came to barn wood. I realize now that it is only usually good for picture frames. Especially, wood that has been out in the weather for over 120 years.

Yesterday, the Gingerman is leaving the house and spots a coyote out in the wheat stubble field. He calls the progeny and she tells me. It is running towards the old chicken coop and the bottoms so I just need to get out there with a gun. I had not replaced the ammunition on the stock holder and when I grabbed the gun I realized that all the bullets were just empty brass. I only had two bullets. I wanted to go upstairs to get more ammo but after cleaning off the scope (dusty from construction work) the women said I was taking too long. So I went outside with only two shots.

I hoofed it up to the far end of the barn lot (100 yards) and waited. I tried calling the Gingerman on his cell phone but he was in a dead spot and so was I. I kept scanning for movement, no coyote, but there were about seven rooster pheasants flying around at the beginning of field #3 and walking around the bottoms on the snow. I stood out there for 15 minutes and never saw the coyote. It ended up turning for the creek bed around the cliff corner above me and I would never have been able to see it unless I walked another 200 yards in the deep snow.

I will be adding bullets to the stock ammo holder as I usually need more than two shots. Annmarie and I have been talking about how to store weapons at the ready inside the house but have them better secured. We will be doing some more research. Leaving them all stacked by the door is probably not a great long term plan. It definitely is not keeping them clean and free of dust and dirt.

Bathroom day 4

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well we had more snow and ice yesterday so Mr Rainman turned around and went back home. I focused on getting the ceiling up. At least part of the ceiling is needed to hang the vent fan and then more is needed to hang the bathroom heater. I was able to break out the DeWalt laser kit. I had forgotten what was in there, as I had only remembered it being a laser for vertical and horizontal. I had forgotten that there is a laser tape measure in the kit! I did not trust it at first but it is pretty handy when you work alone and are reaching across the room trying to take a measurement. The DeWalt laser marker has a self leveling feature so it made getting the ceiling level quite easy.

I managed to get enough ceiling installed to be able to install the vent fan. This turned out to be a miserable endeavor. When we took out the old fan part of the ductwork up in the wall fell out about a five foot chunk. The real problem is that duct work is hidden in the walls and goes through the upstairs bathroom in the walled off section next to the toilet. To gain access where the pipe came apart I would have to rip down a 3×6 foot wall in the upstairs bathroom. Once I had a spot built for the fan frame I attempted to get the duct lined up and could not oven slide it all the way up into the wall, there was a piece of insulation blocking it. I had to go get a telescoping pole, push the insulation out of the way and try to magically fit the two pieces together, after ten minutes holding my arms over my head I gave up.

For my second attempt I was able to turn the 90 degree elbow into a straight shape. I had attached one of the joints that is comprised of four pieces that are offset on one side and can be turned. This lets you change the angle from 0-90 degrees. I then put a flashlight inside the duct and stuck my face and one eye at the bottom of the duct and was able to guide it onto the existing pipe in the wall fairly easily. I congratulated myself too early. I still had to get the elbow bent into a 90 degree shape and get it on the fan body and attach the body to the ceiling. This proved harder than an anticipated and ended up dropping the duct out of the ceiling again. I also ended up with a lot of dirt and insulation on my face!

The third attempt was going to be the one or else I was going to have to quit and work on something else. I went out and got a piece of hanging metal pipe support and screwed it onto one side of the opening. I also cut a piece of 2×4 I could screw in place after I had the duct installed so it could not fall down! I worked it until I was just about ready to give up when I finally managed to get the two ducts together up in the wall. I was able to screw in the other side of the strap and get it under the elbow on the duct. I took a short break and then got the duct corner moved to 90 degrees and attached to the fan frame. The fan frame went up and I spent 15 minutes getting it level and 5/8” hanging down (plywood and metal ceiling). Once I had it level I installed the wooden piece under the duct and readjusted the hanging strap. That thing is wedged in there and is not going anywhere!

The wiring was again one thing I had kinda anticipated but I thought I would have to move one or two items, that is not the case. I am having to rewire every thing in the bathroom and run new wire for about half the items. It is sucking up my time. I had to go to Home Depot today and pickup more electrical supplies and some plumbing supplies. I still need the parts to fix the drain but I am not sure exactly where the drain hole needs to go and that is in the part of the floor we need to cut out so I can figure it out on Monday.

Two of the switches go into the old door space but it is our only access to the room until the pocket door frame is delivered and installed. Once we have the frame installed we will be able to cut out the new door. So I am holding off on installing the boards to block off the door. I have drilled all the holes I need to run the wire.

Today, I worked on installing the new electrical heater in the ceiling. I had to install the ceiling joists in a weird pattern to get around the ventilation duct work. I did not want to lower the ceiling another four inches to avoid the duct work. We are right around 93 inches now for ceiling height. The heater can only really go in one place due to the ductwork, wiring and plumbing up in the ceiling. I had already read the installation instructions for the fan and ordered a 220 V switch and a 100 feet of 10/4 wire. I was ready to go, but as I was unboxing the heater and taking apart the covering to get to the wiring I realized that the wiring was too small. The heater is only designed to be ran on 110 V! So now I need to run a new stretch of wire back to the breaker just for the bathroom heater. This did open up a world of options for a heater timer for the bathroom. I ordered a fancy one that has multiple times already programmed and you just hit the button you want for the time you want. I also discovered that the bathroom vent fan control switch is wireless. So I will be tearing out the switch wire. So now I only need to get one set of outlets installed into the custom cabinet.

I was able to get the entire ceiling installed. I will focus on the wiring and getting that all done tomorrow. I still need to install the rough opening for the pocket door and I have about six more pieces of support to install for the shower shelves and a little more support around the chimney. Once that is done it will be time to cut out the floor! Our custom vanity top is cut, polished and ready to be picked up. I will have to go to the Tricities to pick it up, they only charged $416. That is less than we paid for the upstairs granite and it was a bigger piece. It only had two holes like the upstairs and does have a triple curve in the front but the one upstairs does also.

The snow looks like it may be here to stay for a couple of weeks. I have been moving it first thing in the morning so the sun can melt the leftover on the driveways during the day.

Bathroom day 2

Steve HardinLeave a comment

No plan survives first contact. It snowed last night, a lot. So I had to spend 2.5 hours outside digging out our walk way and then hooking up our snow blade. I almost never use the snow blade so it had sunk down into the ground on the attachment side and I had to pull it out with the tractor. This of course meant that I could not lock it into place until I dug the dirt and grass out of the way. So the plow took me about 25 minutes to hook up by itself. Once I had it hooked up I went to town on the driveway. You have to be careful not to dig into the gravel because the blade will tear it up. I did pretty good but the driveway is a little wider now near the road.

The elk came down with the snow but they appear to be staying on the upper hillside and the upper CRP. The wheat field is fallow this year so they cannot damage it. They also appear to be staying out of the bottoms. There really is not any food there but I thought they might try and find it and tear up the fields but so far they are not. Last time they came down in a huge group they started tearing up the snow and ground to get to the grass. They made a mess of my hay field.

Mr Rainman picked up some longer 2×4 and some 2×6. We are going to make the closet hall wall a 2×6 deep as it was already! This will make it a lot easier to fit the pocket door and to have something to nail into when applying the wall. I ordered the frame yesterday and it should be here early next week.

One of the surprises was how much I am going to have to rewire. Now that the walls are open all of the stuff that was done blind will have to be updated and secured. I need a different type of electrical box to be able to slide it in and out to account for the plywood/schluter/tile thickness. I may even have to mount the boxes after I put up the plywood as I am unsure if they will come out 1.5 inches. I am pretty sure they only adjust up to one inch. I need to move the electrical outlets to the left and right on one wall. I need to move the fan switch and light over two feet so you can reach it when you enter via the pocket door. I need to install 10g wire for the 220V electrical heater in the ceiling and wire in a switch. I just thought of this, the location for the switch was going to be in the cabinet but I was going to put it on the side where the pocket door needs to go! That means I cannot put a recessed box in the wall, I will have to put a box inside the cabinet, good thing I just thought of that, disaster averted. I have already removed the hall lights and fixed their anchors and tightened them back up. They are perfect now, for the last 18 years they have been a touch saggy, I was probably the only one who noticed. I also have to lower the light over the sink, I used the old electrical box and it was three inches from the ceiling. Not aesthetically ideal I am told, so the new light height has been marked.

I had the wife go into the room yesterday and I marked out the three in shower cubby locations and heights. The medicine cabinet/mirror cannot go over the sink as the plumbing is in the way, I was going to move it two feet to the left. You would not be able to see yourself in the mirror while standing at the sink so this was shot down. The sunken medicine cabinet is going over the toilet and we will be finding a mirror for the bathroom. This is why the project manager has to have early input, it saves a lot of retro job changes later on.

We did discover an “ugh ooh” yesterday. The floor under the tub and back wall cabinet is shot. There used to be a toilet where the cabinet was previously located. Mr Rainman almost fell through the floor over by the tub drain and I almost fell through floor over by the old toilet spot. So it looks like we will have to tear out at least three feet of subfloor and reinstall new subfloor. This will make running the power much easier. So it is what it is. The wife says I should have expected it. She is right, it has really been quite a while since I truly tore into the bones of the house and this room was a parlor before and they just pieced together two more walls to make it a bathroom. If I had truly known how bad the walls were I may have prioritized the bathrooms. I know now I should have added that second bathroom upstairs on year 2! Not waited until the teenager was out of the house. Well, it is getting fixed now and we will reinforce the walls and run full intact studs the length of the wall, not pieced together things. They had a window in the wall of the bathroom and just pieced in a couple of 2×4 chunks when they took it out. No sill plate or box for the window, now in their defense it is a non-weight bearing wall but still it makes it a lot easier to set the window. They just cut the shiplap on both sides and slipped the window in place.

I am hoping on day three we can get the floor torn up and I can see whether we need to purchase one or two pieces of 3/4” plywood subfloor. Milo stayed home with me and he is so used to staying with Annmarie at work that he refused to let me out of his sight all day. He spent most of the day trying to get into the bathroom. Once he figured out we would not let him into it, he laid out in the hallway and supervised our progress.