kerdi-board

Bathroom remodel day 17

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Yesterday I wore my blue jean work pants. Normally, I just use my old cotton pants that are too short or too faded to wear to work. They just stay in place with no extra help. The blue jeans were a little loose when I started the day.

Annmarie asked me about our outside cat, Luna. She wanted to know if I had seen her recently? This is a great question as she is as old as our other cat that just died and she has been exhibiting some of the same behaviors it did before it died. I had not seen the cat in 48 hours but its food had been disappearing. The dogs now know how to get back in the garden area so they could be eating her food. When I went out to feed her I reached inside the igloo and started digging around looking for a corpse. She was all curled up in the back and muttered at me for interrupting her sleep. She is alive! We will have to watch out for this as I think she will die this year of old age.

Mr Rainman came out for the morning and fed the cows and calves then we moved the grain bags and all of the tile into the house. We needed the tractor pallet so the snow plow had to be removed (I hope we are done with snow) and the forks placed back on the tractor. We had to go get the new tile saw from my mother’s and the rest of the bathroom tiles. This all got unloaded into the house except the saw. We have decided that the temperature is going to cooperate enough to let us keep the tile saw outside the front door on the lawn. This will help contain the mess in the easiest fashion.

Mr Rainman mixed up a whole bag of Schluter All-set mortar and I kept installing the Kerdi-board on the bathroom walls. I used a mud spot process for leveling the walls using the Kerdi-board. I managed to get about 1/2” of lean out of three walls in the shower. I do have a little variation amongst the panels but am fairly confident that I can now work that out with mud depth during installation. This took me almost four hours, which is the pail set time for the All-Set. I had about two inches left in the bucket that I had to throw out but considering the five gallon bucket was almost full I don’t feel too bad about that.

The more mortar I got up on the walls the higher the moisture content in the bathroom became. This led to me sweating and my blue jeans stretching. I kept having to keep pulling my pants up all of the time, until finally I was at a critical step and my pants fell down around my ankles. I finished the current step then pulled them back up. I eventually had to stop long enough to go upstairs and grab a belt to keep my pants on my hips.

I need to bring a rag into the bathroom with me today so I don’t use the front of my pants to wipe off excessive mud from the tool handle. I keep getting mud on my hands and then need to wipe them off. My pants are handy and convenient when I cannot touch anything because of contamination. I did try to use the mud to cover up the screws but it was too thick. I had to stop. I was able to get all of the Kerdi-board installed and on Saturday I will be waterproofing the shower and Kerdi-board walls.

Our hallway has been clogged up with various items during this entire construction. Now that not as many tools are needed I am pre staging the tile. It all needs to be up to room temperature before it can be installed.

Bathroom Remodel day 16

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I was flying solo yesterday as Mr Rainman had a birthday to celebrate. I was staring at the walls and deciding where to start with the Kerdi-board install when it dawned on me that so far nothing has really worked out easily for me. So maybe I better check the niche rough openings just for shits and giggles. The box says that they are 12×20” niches. So we made the rough openings 12.25×20.25”, so there was a little adjustment room. The box lied. They are more like 12.75×20.75”! I started looking at the plywood hard to see how much I would have to remove to get to the internal cross pieces I had installed to stiffen the niche area. I recognize that Schluter said I did not have to do this, but with all the other reinforcement I had to do on the bathroom walls I just tossed this in as a bonus. I ended up needing to cut out a small section through the edge of a 2×4. The oscillating saw was the only tool I have that would go deep enough and not tear up the back wall also.

The trouble with this is I don’t have enough batteries for the Makita saw. I was chewing through a battery every five minutes. Plus I needed more blades. So I ended up using the Makita and the new DeWalt until one got so warm that my gloves hands were hot then I switched out to the other brand. I will say that the quick blade switch ability on the DeWalt is very nice. I kept alternating between wood only and a blade that could cut through the screws. It took almost four hours to fix this “mistake”. It would have taken a day plus if I had managed to get the Kerdi-board installed before I caught it. I made sure to dry fit the niches before calling it a success.

The Kerdi-board is very easy to install. I have been super impressed so far. I started on the easy section of the bathroom. It is really easy to cut with just a razor knife and the lines painted on it make it easy to freehand the cut. As I was installing the special washers it dawned on me that I did not have enough washers and screws. They did the calculations for a washer every twelve inches but when doing small sections you still need two washers.

The weekend is coming up so I had to stop and make a trip to Hermiston to get more washers and screws! Another two hours of drive time. My timeline is fluid at this point. I am making day to day predictions and at the end of the day refining them. My current prediction is that we will be laying tile by Saturday. I am going to stick with it!

We wanted the bathroom vanity to look like an antique wash basin. The granite I picked out had a lot of purple in it and I wanted to see what the sink would look like on it so I pulled it out of the box and just set it on the granite top. I like it, most of the room will be grey so this color is central to our decorating scheme.

Bathroom Day 14

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I am not sure I should count this as day 14, because I have had to work at the paying job a couple of the days. But I decided to count the days I am on vacation and the clock is ticking no matter what else is going on in our lives. We are past the halfway mark on the calendar and tile is not going up on the wall yet. I recognize that this is a concern. I recognize that it seems like progress is fairly slow but we are actually moving forward every day, I tell myself that repeatedly.

Mr Rainman and I got the rest of the plywood up on the walls. Surprisingly, the room is fairly square except for a corner of the shower by the shower head. I had to watch another video yesterday about the Schluter Kerdi-board. I can use mastic to butter out the corner and get that portion of the shower all level. The way we installed the plumbing we had to cut out some of the plywood to get it to fit correctly. Kerdi-board is getting installed over the plywood then tile so it will be fine. The plywood was an extra step and one that cost about 3-4 days of labor. It is so we can install grab rails anywhere we want and it will make putting up the tongue and groove and the tin ceiling much easier.

Mr Rainman and I had a discussion about the tongue and groove yesterday. Now when you look at the pocket door you can really see the 1/2” slant. I truly believe this is because nothing is breaking up your eye. You can only see it when you are standing in the shower looking outwards. I need to consult with the project supervisor to determine what direction she wants the tongue and groove but I think a 45 degree angle will totally throw off your eye and make it disappear.

That being said as she was inspecting the progress yesterday she spotted a mistake! I had cut one of the niche openings too wide. This happened because we did not install vertical 2×4 bumpers in the opening like we did the other three niches. I don’t know why we did not do the vertical ones. The horizontal ones are in place. Luckily, she spotted it so today it will be corrected with a couple of 2×6 boards installed vertically, problem solved while still little!

Mr Rainman put stripper on the door yesterday so we can get the paint off of it and start getting it rehabbed. We are going to have to plug one end of the latch and then drill new holes for the new handle and lock. It is doable but not super easy. Pretty much the story of the entire job to date.

The granite place called for the third time yesterday so I am going to have to make a trip over there today. The rest of our Schluter order was supposed to be in the store today also, so I am hoping to get both of them in one trip.

The outside temperature is warmer and now it is starting to rain on us. The problem with this is the wood wants to get wet and the back runoff creek bed is now really starting to fill up. It is roaring at night but only about 18” deep at this point. It is moving incredibly fast as the rain and melting snow start coming off the lower mountain foothills. I still have about fifty feet of diversion dike to complete up by the old chicken coop. That is going to have to get on the list this spring. It is too muddy at this point to do anything useful. It would just wash away.

Here’s hoping that the rest of the week goes smoother and I can get the Kerdi-board installed and tile up on the wall this weekend. If I can have tile going up by Friday I will be happy.