Mid-Week Update

I don't usually have a big work day in the middle of the week now that I have meetings that run late on both Tuesday and Wednesday, but today I had an exception. Instead of turning around and going home around 6:00, I stuck around until closer to 8 and was able to get 10 rows of tile in. That includes all pieces that need to be cut to fit, such as around the light or that go behind the mirror. Those are a bit more difficult once you start to get closer to the top of the mirror because each additional row of tile overhangs more space where there is nothing below it and gravity takes its toll. With some effort, creative use of spacers and a bit of blue tape I was able to keep everything straight.

Tomorrow I add the band of mosaic and tile until I reach the ceiling. In the evening I plan on sourcing a suitable replacement for the missing sidesplash (a marble door threshold, perhaps?) and with any luck I'll reach the weekend with at least a bit of work accomplished on one side of the vanity or the other. A few goals for the weekend:

• Complete all tile work that needs to happen around the vanity, get the light and med cabinet installed. Basically, be done with that area.
  
• Complete the drain line from the vanity
• Redguard around the shower
• Reglaze windows downstairs as appropriate, and create a couple of filler pieces to go around the new kitchen window.
• Have a coat or two of polyurethane on the window trim near the shower and have it all ready for reinstallation the following week.

In a few days we'll get to see how much of that actually gets accomplished, especially given the rain that should be moving through Saturday / Sunday.

Pictures Only

I don't have a lot of time to write, but here are a few pictures I took of the work today.

First tile going in.


At the end of the afternoon, only four rows but I did other things besides put in tile. With any luck I'll be up to around the light by the end of Tuesday. I'm doing this wall first, then the sides. I only have one sidesplash, but I have a couple of ideas for getting a piece of marble that would work as the second.


Window trim is in. This was more difficult to reinstall than I thought it'd be, and I think I need to remove just a bit of paint that got between pieces of wood and somehow shows just a bit. That'll be pretty straightforward though. I would've loved to remove the window, but I don't think that's coming out without being able to get at it from the outside and that's 20 feet up in the air.


Trim around the door also went back in today.

A Preview

Here's a quick preview of how all the wood came out after finishing. It'll take a few days to install everything. I'm still debating on whether I want to give any of it a polyurethane topcoat. The only area that might is the window near the shower. I'd rather move the second location the shower curtain attaches to get it off the wood, but it still may be too close. It's hard to tell without being there.


This is the windowsill by the vanity. I took a couple of pictures of the top part several posts back. It used to be in a closet, so it had at least 4 or 5 fewer coats of paint than everything else.

Mid March...

Projects at the rental house are coming along pretty well. Here's where everything stands:


The Wood:

Everything has been sanded and stripped for a while now. I've left it unfinished while I work on more important things both at the rental house and in daily life. This week I finally started to finish it. That's important because I really need to know where window trim will be in order to install tile around the vanity, and because that will let me reattach the outside window trim around the other bathroom window. That needs to be in place so painters can caulk and do their thing.

Here it is with 1 coat of shellac above / nothing below.


Three coats on the left and one coat on the right.


I plan on stopping with three coats and giving everything a polyurethane topcoat with a satin finish after that for water resistance. Shellac was a great choice - it gives the wood much more depth than stain and polyurethane would provide. I can see why people don't use it as much anymore though, because it takes a few (quick) coats to look really good. The high price for wood restoration makes a lot more sense now too.


The Closet:

Not terribly exciting... here's what it looked like on Sunday and nothing has changed since then.




Everything Else:

The rest of the bathroom is largely put together now, as hard as it is to believe. All that remains is to do appearance work... tile, trim, flooring and small bits like a towel bar.








I've also finished up a bit more work in other areas. The trim in the laundry room has either one or two coats of paint, depending on the area. And a new light fixture has been put in the entry room.

Also since the last update the water main broke. I turned water on at the street and heard flowing water. Behind me I saw water shooting up a couple of feet in the air. What happened was, the original galvanized water main to the house broke a year and a half ago or so. The previous owner somehow attached 1 1/4 flex PVC to the broken line, then connected it to the 1in copper line going under the house. That isn't a very tight connection so they used some plastic tubing to make up the difference and held it all together with four radiator hose clamps. I don't think any of this was done to code...

My repair was, 1 1/4 flex PVC mates up with 1in white PVC nicely, and regular PVC glue holds it together. Then I used a couple of adapters to get down to 3/4in CPVC. CPVC is on the same size scale that copper is, so I was able to use a gatorbite connector that's 3/4in on one side and 1in on the other to make the connection. Whether my repair is up to code or not, who knows but it's much stronger than what was there before.

Quick Update...

I took about a week off from working on the house to take care of something much more important. The PNP switch on my wife's car was acting up, and it's always a good idea to get on top of things like that as soon as they pop up because minor electrical stuff that tells the transmission computer what gear it's in can lead to huge actual transmission problems in no time fast, and because it's my wife's car. What can I say, family is more important than other things such as building houses...

As of today, the wood trim is totally ready for shellac. I can't wait to get that done. The shellac flakes will be in sometime this week, and the denatured alcohol I need as a solvent will arrive as soon as I can get to Home Depot. For the stuff to really work, you need to choose at least 95 proof alcohol (denatured or otherwise). After reading about it on someone else's blog for so long I'm looking forward to having a go at it for myself.

The bathroom is starting to move a little quicker. Today I finished temp installing the drain line and tomorrow I'm removing the pipe and numbering it for easy reassembly, and then I'm cutting and boring holes in some wood to stiffen things up in the area I'm boring holes in. Electrical work is essentially done - I just need to hook up the wire for the new light over the vanity and install a switch. Tomorrow I also want to drill the holes for the supply lines to the vanity and run them through the wall. With any luck I'll be able to put in a new toilet on Friday and then be finished with plumbing and electrical. Then I'll be able to devote the weekend to making it look more like a bathroom again. I move pretty quickly when it comes to finish work and I'm really looking forward to getting to that already.

Once the bathroom is done the rest of the place should come together pretty quickly. The only outstanding work is all small stuff... door hardware, painting trim in the laundry room and putting in flooring in there, and a couple of lights. Outside I need to do some landscaping (easy task for such a small yard), brick in a few areas where it's been removed and farm out painting the place. Then I'll be finished and can come back home!

Making Progress... No, Really

I have three projects running at the rental house all at once, so here's about a week's worth of updates on all of them.

The Kitchen:

The window by the kitchen sink was in terrible condition when we bought the place. Both parts were rotting out, and were about at the point where you really wouldn't want to touch either of them for fear that it would all come apart. Long story short, I have a new window in. It was a pretty rough install because the window came sized just a hair larger than it was supposed to be, and because that corner of the house settled differently than the rest (translation: the window frame was slightly out of square). The old window is well... really old, but seems to have been put there in the 1980s. Enough talk, time for pictures.

The old...


The New...



The Bathroom:
I'm finally at the point where I get to build things, so in theory the place should look better when I leave at the end of the day than it did when I showed up. I think that's starting to happen anyway. Here's a shot looking towards where the vanity will go (on the right). You can see the 1970s tiles better. The wood flooring seems to have been painted once or twice, then linoleum put down, then the tile that's visible here, then two kinds of linoleum within the last 25 years or so. I'm installing Pergo because.




Looking towards where the vanity will be. I put up the framing for the new wall today. I'd like to do the electrical for an outlet and a light above the vanity tomorrow. It's starting to look a bit more like a room anyway.



The Wood

I finally took some "before" pictures of how bad this stuff was. They speak for themselves.


An untold number of layers of paint...


This is the piece that goes above the window to the left of the (new) vanity. It shows what the wood looks like after I remove the paint, but before I sand it.


Here's another shot of the same piece after I stripped the paint from the crown molding. The actual color of the wood can be seen, along with what color the wood was finished once upon a time ago. Wish I could've saved the finish (because I'd be done by now) but it was too far gone.



Every piece of wood trim has been stripped and sanded, and within the next few days I'll have it all refinished. I'm going with shellac, and a polyurethane topcoat over that on the larger window trim since it's more or less in the shower.

Plans tomorrow are to run the electrical in the bathroom and do the plumbing. Wish me luck...

The Bathroom Destroyer

I'm more or less finished demolishing the bathroom (no, not that way - I mean breaking out walls and stuff like that).

The bathroom has been about 8 colors over the years. Beige, something blue/green, fuchsia (didn't come out in this picture well), green, another shade of green, tan and another shade of tan. Whatever color I pick makes 9.



I also found all 3 major types of wiring used during the 20th century. Exciting stuff, I know... up there with Sheldon's enthusiasm with flags on this week's Big Bang Theory. Knob and tube, ungrounded, and romex.



Here's how everything looked after I finished destroying everything in sight.



The flooring mystery is solved. Linoleum (not pictured) on top of a layer of linoleum that was removed, on 1/4in plywood, on top of 12" vinyl tiles that look like wood, on top of actual wood. I'm taking it down to the tile that looks like wood level and then installing pergo. Not enough time to strip the tiles (they're REALLY on there) and refinish the wood below that's in unknown condition.


View looking towards where the vanity will go. This used to be a closet, now the space to the right will be a linen closet using the original entrance from the hall. The chair came free with the house. What a deal!!!



Looking towards where the vanity will go. I'm not sure if the wiring to the sconces is live or not... don't think it is, but I'd rather not find out the hard way. I'll deal with it when I do the rest of the wiring (vanity light and an outlet in that area. I'm still debating on whether to add an exhaust fan or not, but I probably will.



This is the scenic view looking back towards the shower/tub and window that's no longer there. I took all trim and the window out so I could scrape however many layers of paint off and restore the wood. The trim appears to be chestnut and I haven't looked at the window yet. I had no idea, but it's double hung. All 4 weights had broken ropes and I'm not sure if the top part of the window had moved at any point during my or my parent's lives until today when I took it out.

I've learned a few things about past construction methods while doing this. Technology aside, they were missing a few things like insulation in exterior walls and fire blocking. It's not like I expected to see fiberglass in there, but at least something. They weren't exactly big on attaching door and window frames to studs or any structure at all.Both items are held in place only by the casing. What surprised me was to find an electrical box and studs built to the same sizes ours are now. I'll be modernizing whatever is exposed but not tearing anything apart more than it already is.
Moving forward I plan on finishing the woodwork, framing out the wall between the closet and bathroom, replacing the window in the kitchen now that one finally came in, and rebuilding the bathroom. The job isn't done yet, but the end is in sight at least.