bathroom remodel

Bathroom remodel day 41

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The bathroom is chugging along just like the little train that could. I spent all day Friday getting three valves onto the copper pipe sticking out of the wall. The toilet valve was the easiest as I had a long chunk of pipe sticking out that had to be cutoff. The sink side had two short stubs that I needed to heat up and remove the copper caps. I ended crushing one of the tips with a set of pliers and then had to cut it off. I had to use the sawzall to cut it as it was too close to the wall for a pipe cutter. This then made a not even cut which messed up my compression tightening valve.

I had to go to Pendleton for a second time that day to get a new brass compression ring and a 12” hose for the toilet. On the plus side the toilet works and after soldering on an extension pipe the sink valves are in place and they do not leak. I am just not very good at plumbing.

We installed a curtain as a door so the toilet could be used on Friday. I had been working on the door all week. I had a wood insert glued into the end of the door and I purchased a 1” and 3/4” dowel so I could drill out the old door handle and lock holes. Once I had that all dried, cut off and sanded smooth I filled the cracks with an epoxy based filler. After that was sanded down I drilled the new holes for the new handle. It just made it easier to start with an intact door again before trying to make new holes. I am going to brush on a little stain after the door is hung.

Saturday we moved furniture! Sarah and Grant were given a nice set of Spanish style bedroom set. We cleaned out the old room, moved the box bed back into the sewing room and moved out several items from both rooms. We then cleaned up both rooms and all of the furniture. All of this we did in the morning, then I had enough time to install the door handle in the bathroom door. I need the door gone so I can get the corner trims stained then start working on the custom bathroom cabinet. Gingerman went out to their farm and started discing a five acre field that he is prepping for seed. The disc he got last week is working great.

Early afternoon we went and picked up the furniture. It was heavy. We were able to get the horse trailer across our spring by driving through the spring. I had brought in 2-3” rock when we thought the septic truck was going to have to drive around to pump our tank. It still makes a land bridge that the water flows over 1-2” deep. The truck and trailer went over it just fine. We used arm lifts to help move the furniture and they made all the difference. I don’t think I could have gotten the one dresser upstairs without them. As it was I had to place both feet wide on either side of the dresser and lift it up one step at a time. By the time we got to step 16 I thought I was going to die. When we made it to step 19 I told myself there were only two steps left and if I let go Gingerman was still holding up the lower end and could not do that indefinitely. As soon as we had it on the top landing we took a five minute break.

I took the low side on the long dresser and the Gingerman was surprised at the different muscles used on the uphill side. The lower side carries more weight but it is in your legs not your mid back. I told him it was much worse with the heavier piece of furniture. We forgot a piece of the bed frame. Once we tried to install the bed frame we realized there had to be more parts. All the parts fit in the bedroom and the kids have an actual bed to sleep on. I told the Gingerman when we left to go disc until dark that I was done working.

I ended up installing the actual bathroom door. It was a tight fit but I was able to get it in place and adjusted. It looks good. I think I will still hit it with one more coat of conditioner to seal up the wood. I was able to do a little work on the crown molding on Friday after the plumbing and now we have crown molding in the main section of the bathroom. All that is left is the shower enclosure. Now that the door is in place Annmarie is already talking about finish trim! We attempted to put the vanity in place but there is a cross piece that needs to be routed out about 1” to make room for the wall plumbing. I will also need to readjust some of the drawers in the vanity. The plumbing is more to the right of the cabinet than I anticipated.

Bathroom remodel day 40

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well it is a mere 40 days I have vested into the bathroom remodel over the last 11 weeks and we are still closing in on it a bit at a time. I had a few grand delusions and figured I could get all of the crown molding up over a holiday weekend. First of all the crown molding is taking forever. I did not order the precut corners as there are 12 in the bathroom. This is causing me to cut each corner about 12 times before I am getting the angle right. I am just making little cuts but I put it up, measure it, then cut it and measure again and repeat it until it works. On top of that the nails do not want to go into the plywood ceiling so I am now pre-drilling holes with smaller diameter bit and driving the nails in with a nail set when they stop moving with the hammer. I love the way the cut glass light shades break up the light, it looks great on the tin ceiling.

I did get the toilet lid installed. It only took me three tries to get all the pieces in the correct order. It has a push button that releases the toilet lid from the anchor bolts. I had plans to install the three shutoff valves for the bathroom but Annmarie was making rolls on Saturday and I did not want to turn off the water then get in a bind the day before a holiday. I opted to do nothing with the plumbing. My track record with plumbing is abysmal, no need to flout my efforts before the gods. We would all pay for that attempt.

I was able to cut down a board and get it glued into the pocket door. My next stop is to pickup a two pine dowels, one 1” & 3/4” so I can fill both holes in the door. I will just drill a hole the entire thickness of the door and drive in the dowel. This will also help my large piece I just glued in stay in place. Once I have everything glued in place the end will be filled in with some stainable wood based putty. Once it is all smooth and ready for stain I will drill the lock and handle holes in the door.

Since this is Easter weekend I did laundry and cleaned up the house. Mostly, this meant putting away tools from the bathroom. They were stacked up in the mud room and before I could use my new birthday present, coffee bean roaster I needed a spot to store it. This meant cleaning out the mud room and installing the bean roaster and cooler on top of the food dehydrator. The coffee roaster only does 4 oz at a time, so I will need to do two batches to fill up my coffee grinder hopper. It took three batches of beans roasted to get something drinkable. Green beans are only $10/pound so I figure I can drink coffee forever now. The fresh roasted is super smooth and has zero bitter taste. The mud room does get a little smoky, so we have to keep the laundry room door shut. I have been opening up the back door but that is not going to work during winter.

I will keep plugging away at the bathroom. The progeny and Gingerman both got to use the shower and loved it. I need to get the door done so I can start working on the custom cabinet. I need the sawhorses and working space that the door is taking up.

Bathroom day 39

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The bathroom project is moving forward, it might not seem like it but it continues to grind on. I just have to keep at it and not quit until it gets done. I have 39 days into actually working on the bathroom. It has been 10 weeks since I started the project!

Mr Rainman was able to rub on some Tried & True finish onto the blue pine and it really made it snap. I started on the ceiling one evening and after 1.5 hours realized that I had done it wrong, I had made a gap on the side when one was only needed for the ends. I had to take it all down and do it correctly the second time. This is just the main panels, I will need to get the crown molding on next to marry the ceiling and walls. The crown molding is going to be hard as I will need to be able to drive a nail into the shower grout. I have some diamond drill bits and I think I am going to have to predrill a hole. It will not be fun.

Once I had the ceiling panels in I installed the bathroom light. Of course, when looking at the light I did not check to see what kind of lightbulb it actually uses. It turns out to be some LED with a G9 base. I was only able to find two of them in Pendleton so I ended up ordering more on the internet. It is a little dark in the bathroom, I may end up having to order a brighter light bulb. It may take some trial and error to get the amount of light tuned in. I do really like the light design and the cut glass makes some interesting patterns on the metal ceiling tiles.

We had purchased some slate outlet covers but it turns out, that for some unknown reason, we did not order enough. So I installed the ones we had and ordered three more.

The wife pointed out that I had installed the light switch upside down and then pointed out that the medicine cabinet pull was upside down. I had installed the entire cabinet upside down. I just turned the light switch 180 degrees and it was perfect. The cabinet I just removed the handle and turned it 180 degrees! It is perfect.

I was going to put a shim//toilet extender on to get the outlet even with the tile but they were all very cheap and did not fit the old hole pattern. I opted to get an extra thick wax seal and see if it would work. I had Annmarie help direct the toilet while I moved it into place. I was happy to have to push it down about 1/4” to get the wax to spread out. I promptly filled the toilet bowl with water to stop the smell from coming into the house. I also managed to get three valves while at the hardware store. I will work on installing those next but they require me to shut off the water to the house and drain the lines. I also forgot to buy the decorative wall plates so those will still be needed. So the toilet does not work.

I will get all the crown molding installed before we bring in the bathroom vanity. It will be too crowded to move a ladder around with the vanity in place. The old door will work but I need to glue in a patch first and that is going to take me about an hour to custom cut the fill piece and clean out the hole. It needs to happen also, but I figure until we have a functional toilet I have some leeway.

Bathroom remodel day 37

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well, I have put three more days in on the bathroom. It is going, not smoothly but it is progressing. On Friday I was able to get the plumbing parts installed. I only had to go two stores to find what I needed. Unfortunately, I discovered a couple of issues. These are what I will be referring to as endearing quirks in the future. The first issue was I could not get any hot water, only cold to come out of the shower head. I thought I had reversed the valve insert and I could simply turn it 180 degrees and solve the problem. After much consideration it dawned on me that I had plumbed the hot and cold backwards. The instructions were quite explicit on how to install the valve body such that the hot and cold would not be backwards. I read the instructions repeatedly as this is not really repairable unless I tear into the hallway wall and correct if from the back. So as a constant reminder that I did the bathroom the hot and cold water are reversed in the shower. There is also an insert that I did not raise the floor high enough so it collects water.

Currently, we are going to live with it for now and see how it goes. That won’t be hard as we are still not using the shower. The bathroom has no ventilation fan, lights or heater. We need to get the wood sealed and the ceiling up before using the shower. Saturday and Sunday I worked on getting the tongue and groove installed on the upper walls. What I did not realize until I was two boards deep was that for some odd reason I had two sizes of tongue and groove boards. The groove and tongue were smaller on one set. Needless to say this was not discovered until I was unable to marry two pieces with a large hammer being involved. I then had to sort out the two types and discovered that I had enough to complete each sidewall in their own type. This meant I only had pieces that did not match to do the end wall. I ended up with a trip to Home Depot to get ten tongue and groove blue pine boards. I had to look through 50 boards to find ten worth buying that did not have horrible cracks or knocked out knot holes. I would recommend waiting a month before going there to buy any.

I was able to use these to finish the end wall today. It took forever to get the walls installed as each single piece of wood had to be sanded smooth. No one puts a smooth finish on wood any more, it all has to be sanded. This takes quite a while. I had hopes of getting the ceiling installed this weekend also but that did not happen. I am going to see if I cannot work on the ceiling this week. The sheep are lambing so it is taking me two hours after work out in the barn to get everyone fed and put up for the night so there is not a lot of time left for the bathroom.

Annmarie and I found a mirror kicking around in the house when we were setting up her sewing room. It used to go on a men’s butler drawer I believe. I had this great idea to install it on the wall in our walk in closet. She told me it was fine but it was not going to do her any good. I got some metal pieces to hold it in place and installed it this weekend.

Bathroom day 36

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Spring is coming! I need to be done with the bathroom! There are a lot of things to do outside now that spring is here. Instead on Friday a little mastic was mixed up and the three tiles were set. We then went out to the old chicken coop and brought in all of the blue pine tongue and groove siding. We measured it and I did the math, we should have an extra 6 sq feet. The air compressor and nailers were drug out and we determined that we don’t have any 16 gage finish nails short enough. Some will have to be purchased. The 18 g nailer will only take 1.25” nails and I want at least 1.5”. Those are now purchased and ready to go.

Since we now had to wait for the bathroom to dry out for a day before patching the grout we went outside and started to drag the gravel road in an attempt to work out the potholes. We spent a couple of hours dragging the driveway with the box blade and the arena groomer. It turned out pretty good and there are currently no pot holes in the driveway.

We have been having so many lambs that Mr Rainman and I ended up rearranging the barn. We made the momma/baby area bigger.

Saturday a batch of epoxy grout was mixed up. All I had to do was patch the bad areas and then clean every hour. I did this and two hours later found three little pin holes. A fresh batch of grout had to be mixed up so I could swipe a single time in a single spot. It was some serious overkill but totally necessary. We have one batch of grout left if needed.

I unpacked the inset vanity that goes over the toilet. I thought I was going to have to set it first before putting up the tongue and groove wall board. It was going to require a lot of specialize cuts. I traced out the cupboard pattern onto the plywood so I could start getting a feel for how I was going to cut this board. Annmarie came in, looked at it and said that I could just set the insert over the wall boards! This will make it so much easier. I plan on getting the wallboards installed next weekend. Mr Rainman will be gone and it is something I can do without any help.

Annmarie and I are so confident of the shower that we ordered the shower curtain rod and soap holders. I will be finishing the plumbing install next weekend also. I was informed that the rest of the bathroom can be a work in progress as long as the shower works.