New Art

A few years ago, Melissa's team gave her a gift certificate (for Christmas) to The Alcove, one of our favorite art galleries. She finally spent it this weekend. We picked out two more Emmy Dudley pieces, titled "Cat" and "Dog". We hung the cat above Melissa's side of the bed because she had a cat when we got married, and the dog on my side of the bed because I had a dog when we got married.


These pieces are a little different than our other Emmy Dudley, "Betilda and the Bee", hanging on the other side of our bedroom...


...because they are painted on wooden cut-outs that stick out about an inch from the wall. Yes, we like Emmy Dudley. Many thanks to Melissa's team for the great Christmas gift!

Sump Pump Slump

Last night, lying in bed, Melissa asked if I had left the downstairs fan on or something. She thought she heard some kind of motor running. I ignored it and went back to sleep. This morning I heard her yell something from the basement. I went downstairs and saw the sump pump well overflowing as the pump ran. It smelled like it had been running for a while.

We assumed, after demoing a concrete floor with porcelain tile above the sump pump, we had gotten the sump pump well filled with so much debris it had clogged. Melissa had pointed this out earlier and we attempted to clean it but apparently we didn't clean it well enough.

Anyway, after several minutes of unsuccessful unclogging with my hand, we manually drained the well and attempted to remove the sump pump to examine it. I began unscrewing plumbing to get the thing free. Like a fool, I unscrewed a one-way flow valve that had been put there to prevent sewage from backing up into our basement. At first it looked like clean water, but after 2 or 3 seconds it turned brown and smelled like the worst sewage. I stood there with the stuff pouring all over my arm and leg as we started yelling at each other wondering what I had just unleashed. Somewhere during this chaos I revealed that I had just taken a crap upstairs and that maybe it was now draining out all over me. After several agonizing seconds of screwing the valve back the disgusting water finally stopped flowing. Damn that was gross. After repeated washings I can still smell the stuff on my hands.

Later, I just cut the PVC pipe below the valve and was able to remove the sump pump. Melissa's standard technique seemed to work. We just took the thing apart, put it back together, tested it in a bucket...and it started working again. I guess we had dislodged some piece of debris. We put the whole thing back in its place, connected the cut pipes with a boot, and did a final test with more water to ensure it was still working.


If you ever demo something above your sump pump, make sure you cover the sump pump so debris does not put your sump pump in a slump.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Tongue and Groove Planks

I've always hated drywall. I have limited experience working with it but I know it's a messy install and it feels hollow and cheap. I know drywall absorbs water like a sponge and weakens to nothing after water damage. One can easily kick holes in drywall or even do so by swinging a door handle into it. When it punctures or tears you see paper. It costs about $6 for a 4 X 8 sheet. How good can this stuff be? I just don't get it.

After Goggling "solid wood tongue and groove planks", something I had been toying with, all I see are post after post of people complaining about wood planks on their walls. Oh the horror! There are countless more articles on removing wood planks or covering them with drywall then anything praising both their aesthetic qualities and durability. What's up with this? My two favorite rooms in my 1920's house are those with the original pine planks.

So when it came time to determine a wall covering for our bathroom walls where the old tile used to be, I talked Melissa into tongue and groove planks hung horizontally. My original plan was to buy a router bit to cut the tongue and grooves. But my work colleague, Dave, brought me some samples of clean yellow southern pine sold at Lowes and HomeDepot that had the tongues and grooves cut already. Although, it would have been more fun to cut them myself, I went with Dave's easier suggestion.


The damn panels are a joy to hang and are thus far the most satisfying part of this bathroom renovation. They look a little country-ish now, for my tastes, but once painted, I think I'll get the old ship-type look I want.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Shower Curb

I went with stacking three 2X4's for the shower curb. I used lots of nails and liquid nails, including screwing into the studs on either side. This curb is not going anywhere.


Though, building it was the easiest part of this bathroom renovation, deciding exactly where it would go was a challenge. I hope we decided correctly.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Furring Strips?

I think renovation is much more challenging than building from scratch. Everything you do must take existing construction into account. I can deal with things like walls not being square but the thing that I am growing to hate most is determining how to transition to existing wall. In our case it's the whole drywall hung over plaster thing. We've got metal crap sticking out that is attached under wallboard we are trying to keep. Matching new wallboard to the existing stuff is a real pain. Especially determining how to transition to tile.

We decided to build a shallow shelf as a sort of chair rail type thing to cover the transition from old to new wall. In preparation for the new wall (where the tile used to be). I cut a bunch of half inch furring strips from plywood and gave them to Melissa to hang with the nail gun.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Drywall Patching

The idea of ripping out the original plaster ceiling and layer of drywall over it, then replacing it, seemed like a nightmare to me. I hate the idea of drywall over plaster but I figured it would be more trouble than it was worth to replace it. Other than several nail pops and some poorly sanded areas it was in good shape.

We fixed all the nail pop areas, some crumbly sections under the old mirror (that was glued to the drywall), and patched the old electrical box holes. We used the standard technique of screwing a board behind the hung drywall, cutting a small filler patch out of new drywall, and screwing it to the wood. In our case it was a pain because we had plaster behind our drywall. Which meant we had stack drywall scraps and shims to get the patch flush.

The only drywall screws I had long enough to go through the drywall and plaster to meet our wood strip were too long. I know it's not cool to leave pointy screws sticking into the hollow of walls so we improvised. Melissa cut a wine cork in half and I screwed it over the screw points in the wall hollow.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Plaster Demo

Melissa and I have had more conversations about how to tile the shower than anything else. Tile to the ceiling? Tile the ceiling? Tile the non-shower walls? Should the tile be flush with the wall board or overlap it? Should the glass block window have a tile frame or should there be wood on the top portion?

We think we've finally figured it out. The plan is to tile up enough to frame the window top, leaving the original plaster covered with its existing drywall above. The tile will overlap the wallboard at its transitions.

Ripping out plaster covered with drywall is one thing. Trying to do it while saving certain parts of it is another. Melissa used a utility knife and drywall saw at the boundaries. I used a reciprocating saw to cut the plaster boards where they could not be removed in their entirety. We used hammers, pry bars, and tin snips to remove the drywall, plaster, and mesh.

I stitched together 12 photos to show the future shower walls after the last messy chunk of demo. The plaster walls in the rooms on either side of the bathroom are visible. They appear strong and healthy after 87 years.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Electrical

The bathroom's electrical fixtures were black with brass plate covers. They were also installed in the wrong places for our plans. Finally, we wanted to add an additional task light near the toilet. One each of the switches and receptacles were in the right place so I attempted to use the existing metal boxes instead of switching them out with the new blue plastic ones. I got one of those vertically stacked dual single-pole switch jobies that fit in one box. I wanted to consolidate two switches into the existing box. It would have been so nice if it had just worked.

What I discovered was a mess of spaghetti in each box, with several wires coming in and out. As luck would have it I was not able to add another switch and get all the wires shoved back in the tiny metal box. In addition, the stupid switch body kept coming apart whenever I screwed it in. Apparently the old metal box had gotten squished or it wasn't universal enough to accommodate my new switch.

So after a little more cursing, I was forced to rip out the old metal boxes and replace them. We had removed the bottom half of the wall so it was easy to reach up behind the drywall and plaster to make the swap. Here's the new main light and fan next to the entrance. We'll keep the old box in the wall and patch over it.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - The Damn Glass Block Window

What's the best solution to the problem presented by a window in a shower? Replace the window with glass block. At least, that seems to be what everybody does these days. Instead of researching all the companies that make these glass block kits, we just went with Pittsburgh Corning Glass Block, which is what Lowe's carries. Despite the flashy website, I hate this company's kit. For example, instead of making the various spacers one needs, they give you a generic spacer and explain that you need to make the spacers you'll need by cutting their spacers up and filing them down. Trust me, it's a real pain in the ass!

I spent most of a day framing out the new rough opening per Pittsburgh Corning's specs, according to our plan. Melissa spent a good portion of the day making the stupid glass block spacers and buying other Pittsburgh Corning accessories. At the end of the day I finished my rough opening, Melissa primed it, and we added the plastic channels (breaking one in the process). Again, Pittsburgh Corning's steps suck. They wanted us to rip one of the channels in half (lengthwise) with an exacto blade. Yeah, right. I would like to see an exacto blade that could score this thing enough to rip it. Ours certainly didn't work. A final measurement revealed I was 1/2" short on my height. Oh well. I was done for the day. It would have to work.


The next day we painted the channel screw heads white so they wouldn't show through the glass. And now we were ready to mix the mortar. I hated every bit of this project, especially mixing the mortar...with a piece of wood. Buttering up the glass block sucked even worse than I expected. The mortar wouldn't stick to the glass, so we could only pack it on with our hands. The more we worked, the more mortar slid off our glass block and fell all over the place. Complicating matters was the fact that the outside of the window was above a basement stairwell. So one of us had to be on a ladder on the other side of the window trying to catch mortar and shove it back in. After lots of cursing we managed to fit the last of the glass block in place. We spent the rest of the day messing with the mortar and trying to clean the glass. In the end, I'm sure it will be beautiful. But I sure hated doing it!

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Bondo

The obvious way to deal with rotten wood is to replace it. But sometimes that's easier said than done. For example, as I began pulling out rotten studs I discovered what must have been a window leak in the old shower (below bottom left corner of pictured window). There was an obvious trail of rotten wood behind four side-by-side studs I had to replace. But these newly revealed rotten boards were the planks that make up the external wall and the exterior siding planks were nailed in part to said rotten planks. Thus, replacing said rotten planks would involve taking off a chunk of the siding.


Since the planks were in excellent condition except for the leak trail, I decided to repair them instead of replace them. First, I attacked the rot with a hammer claw, removing all the rotten wood. Second, Melissa saturated the areas with Minwax High Performance Wood Hardener (which turns the wood a dark wet color as shown in the above picture). Third, I rebuilt the original wood with Bondo, which is a less expensive version of Minwax High Performance Wood Filler.

Roof Leak Near Chimney

Every time I clear the gutters I make a point to remove the leaves that build up behind our chimney. We have a steep roof valley that directs water and debris to a spot directly behind a granite chimney in front of our house. After lots of rain I've noticed water pooling up behind the chimney but I figured, surely whoever did the roof put adequate flashing below all the tar and calk around the chimney. At least that's what I thought until Melissa pointed out a ceiling leak...that happened to be right below where I always notice water pooling.

So after Googling roof leaks around chimneys and staring at my problem spot for 30 minutes I decided this one was way out of my league.

The home's previous owner left behind a substantial amount of paper work on the home so I was able to find the number of the guy who put the roof on. I figured I would start with him, hoping he would honor his work, and fix the problem. He remembered the house and explained that the previous owner refused to pay the extra money to add the cricket behind the chimney and opted to find his own solution. Anyway, the roofer was cool, gave me a decent price, a five year guarantee on his work, and had the same shingles in stock (so the cricket would match the rest of my roof).

When he was done I climbed up to examine his work and enjoy my new cricket and flashing.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Under the Tile Walls?

I didn't know what we would find under the tiled walls. After what I saw under the tile floor, the was expecting the worst. We found both good and bad. The good was that for the most part the structure was in good shape. We even discovered three vertical 4 x 6" posts, which I thought was cool. The bad was the rotten wood we found below the window where the tub/shower used to be. It would all have to be replaced. To complicate things, the outside wall of the house was nailed to these rotten studs and cripple studs. I knew I would have to remove the original plaster around the window to see the fill extent of the damage. Fun fun fun!

As I continued to demo the window area, Melissa washed down the studs we would keep with a watered down bleach solution in case we had any mildew/mold anywhere.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - More Concrete!

Next, we had to tear out the wall tile that surrounded the entire bathroom. Sounds easy enough, right? Of course not. This tile was attached to 1" thick concrete that was attached to a wire mesh. Once again Branden's hammer drill saved the day. After another day beneath face masks and at least 50 more crate loads of concrete, we finally had most of the nasty stuff out for good. Now I'm just wondering if we should have rented that roll-away dumpster Melissa wanted.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Rebuilding The Floor

As we removed the concrete and the planks between the joists supporting it, we couldn't believe what we saw. How was this bathroom floor and all its weight being supported? The joists were completely rotten except the bottom inch or so. In fact, one of them fell on its own once the concrete was removed. We were hoping we would only have to sister one or two of the joists and the rest would be fine. Instead, we knew we would have to replace all the joists.
It was weird walking into the basement and looking up through a large hole into our old bathroom.The job wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for all the cast iron plumbing, electrical, and other spaghetti hanging from the old joists. We had to support everything from below as we removed the old joists and made the new ones. This also meant we had to weave our bodies around all these pipes as we worked. Pain in the ass! Two days later we had our new floor.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Concrete Removal

After our Christmas vacation we arrived home with Bob as planned. We used my friend Branden's hammer drill with it's spade bit and broke up the concrete between the joists.
What a back breaker! The concrete was about 6 inches thick, super heavy, and required constant trips outside to a pile we started...Cutting through the ceramic tile was scary as the pieces flew like broken glass. After a while, the concrete dust was ridiculous. The basement floor, looking through what used to be the bathroom floor, looked like the surface of the moon, covered with concrete debris. Eventually we removed the last of it.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - The Concrete Decision

Once the tub was removed I noticed a split in the concrete slab that had been poured between the bathroom floor joists. The split allowed me to shove a crowbar between the layers and I began ripping up a 1.5 inch deep layer of concrete the ceramic tile was attached to...Now I could finally start to see what we were dealing with. Below the 1.5 inch concrete layer was about 4.5 more inches of concrete. But worse yet, the joists surrounding the concrete appeared completely rotten from nearly a century of concrete moisture. Sensing I was way over my head in this project, Melissa and I began posting questions on Do It Yourself forums. I marked up the following picture (looking up at the bathroom floor from our basement) to help describe our bathroom floor construction to the various contractors that would hopefully respond to our questions.In addition to the concrete and rotten joists, we also found rotten wood all around the plumbing side of the tub we removed.Most of the responses to our DIY posts recommended removing all concrete to get the weight off our poor house and to allow us to create a stable, solid, flat floor. So we abandoned our previous plan of using self leveling compound to fix the sagging, cracked concrete floor and decided to remove the concrete.

I knew hiring contractors to do this would be expensive and take a while to find good ones. I also have a hard time trusting contractors and sometimes feel they don't respect the rest of the house. I suggested to Melissa that we drive her dad, Bob, down with us from Ohio after our Christmas visit (and fly him back several days later).

We've worked several projects in the past with Bob, including building a backyard storage shed and pergola. Bob tends to work quickly and figure out complicated construction solutions with sound knowledge and he typically does it without overspending on materials. We called Bob, showed him the pictures of our bathroom problems, and he agreed to offer his help.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - The Cast Iron Tub

The first thing we had to do was remove the cast iron tub. It was in bad shape and had already been re-glazed at least once. On the advice of my friend, Al Hess, I took a sledgehammer to it and broke it into pieces Melissa and I could manage. The first attempt proved it was not going to be as easy as I hoped...

Once I started hitting it in weaker areas it got a little easier. After several hours of cursing and banging my brains out, we finally got the beast out.

Mahogany Vanity Finish

A long time ago my dad recommended using Minwax's Wipe-On Poly, mainly because it eliminated the worry of brush marks. But for this project I figured I was ready for something more ambitious. I picked up a copy of Bob Flexner's Understanding Wood Finishing book in search of a better finish. I convinced myself I wanted to fill the pores of my mahogany with colored paste wood filler to bring out the grain and provide a smooth finish, give it a wash coat, then brush on a polyurethane finish. But after experimenting on some scraps with the paste wood filler I quickly bought a bottle of good old Minwax Wipe-On Poly and gave up most everything Flexner had taught me. Oh well. I'm definitely an amateur.

As easy as Minwax makes it, I still hate finishing. In order to protect the mahogany from the bathroom's wet environment, I wiped on seven coats, including sanding with 220 grit between the first three coats. The first three sanding sessions were aimed at filling the pores with the wipe-on poly. Flexner said this would work. I sanded the final coat down to 1500 grit using mineral spirits to keep the polyurethane from clogging the fine paper. I guess it worked. Man do I hate finishing. What are you doing this weekend, Eric? Sanding and varnishing...again!

Mahogany Vanity Construction

In preparation for the renovation of our second bathroom, Melissa and I did some research and determined all the available bathroom vanities out there are butt-ugly and most are poorly made. So naturally, I decided to make one myself. After careful consideration we decided it was worth buying a vanity top, however, rather than put up with all the maintenance that would come if I built a wooden sink top. After lots and lots of searching we found a timeless white porcelain top that was within our budget. I took it’s measurements and designed a four-legged vanity cabinet, with adequate storage and support.

Next, I researched types of wood and decided on African Mahogany for its water durability, color, availability, and price. After much agony and decisiveness, I picked up a piece of 1.5” and a longer piece of ¾” Mahogany and here is what I came up with…

I routed out tongues around the edges of panels…

…and grooves on the edges of frame pieces…

…I abandoned my usually pocket hole joinery technique and bumped it up a notch in join strength and cosmetics by using the BeadLock System to create mortise and floating tenon joints. I was heavily influenced by test results in a Fine Woodworking book that indicated mortise and floating tenon joints were the best mixture of strength and ease of construction.

In the end I decided I didn’t like the system because it depended on too much eyeballing pencil lines and it was nearly impossible to clamp the jig tight enough to keep it from moving while drilling. However, it did allow me to adapt it to many different wood widths…

Shelves (and guest room) Completed!

It took about a full day to dress up the shelves with trim. Another full day to patch up all the imperfections with wood-filler. Another day to sand. Another three days to prime and paint the walls, ceiling, and trim. Another two days to prime and paint the shelves. And another day to attach the cabinet doors and move the books in. Whew! I stitched several pictures together below in an attempt to show the nearly finished room. (We still have to add the window treatments and find some neat hooks to hang on the wall where the closet door opens to.)

Cutting the Glass

Melissa and I went back to Armstrong Glass in Kennesaw, GA and picked out some neat glass with swirls of green, white, and brown. We picked colors to match the room, which we will paint dark brown, and the rest of the house, which has earthly colors.

Getting the 3/8" glass sheets home without breaking was the first challenge. The second was cutting it. I used my T-square, clamps, and an oil-filled glass cutter. Cutting glass is scary. It's as if some instinct holds you back, telling you not to attempt to break the glass. But even though my hands would not stop shaking, I managed to cut 5 perfect glass panels for my cabinet doors.

Later, after priming, painting, wood filling, and lots of sanding, I added the hardware and 3/8 square dowels using my brad nailer. Without the brad nailer it would have been impossible to nail the 3/8 square dowels without splitting them or breaking the glass.

Starting the Cabinet Doors

I built the 5 cabinet doors using 1 X 3 poplar frames joined using half-laps. On my last project, I embedded a glass panel in a slot within the frame. Brek suggested building the door more like a picture frame so the glass could be replaced if broken, without rebuilding the entire frame. His advice on holding the glass in the frame was to use square dowels. I managed to find some 3/8" poplar square dowels at Lowes so I decided to use Brek's suggestions.

Finding a way to glue up the cabinet door frames and keep the door perfectly flat is always a challenge for me. The flattest thing I could find was an extra 3/4 plywood sheet I plan to return. I used sheets of paper as protection against glue attaching itself to the plywood. To hold the frame pieces flat I used my boat battery on some scrap wood (see photo above). The end result was excellent, my best yet!

Second Shelf Wall and Corner

After lots of research on dealing with inside corners of shelves, I decided on the method seen in the picture above. I picked it because it seems to make the best use of space. Melissa thinks cabinet doors for most of the corner shelves will be useful because we'll probably use them for linens and other random stuff. I agree. Now I just have to figure out how to frame out a space to attach hinges...not fun.

I used nailers in the plaster walls on the corners and on each of the surrounding shelves. The nailers on the surrounding shelves will easily hold the weight. I skipped the plywood backing for the corner shelves because it would have been too difficult to try to fit it in there properly...also because I ran out of 1/4" plywood. Once we paint it and cover most of the corner shelves with cabinet doors, nobody will care.

I used 1 X 2 popular as the face over all the exposed plywood edges. It will help prevent shelf sag on some of the longer spans. It also allowed me to get away with Brek's adjoining carcase suggestion.

I went a little crazy with the nail gun while attaching the face pieces. The darn thing is so fun, I just got careless and several of the nails went in crooked and came back out in wrong places. I'll pull these nails through with plyers and patch the damage with wood putty...the joy of paint grade projects.

Building the First Shelf Wall

After suggesting I would build these shelves directly onto the guestroom walls, my brother, Brek, talked me out of it. He convinced me that building them using separate carcases that would later fit together was the way to go. This also solved another of my problems. Since the ceiling height is greater than 8 feet, I couldn't figure out how to get my plywood verticals to go from floor to ceiling. Both Brek and my Dad also believed the right design would include building a back onto the shelves instead of using the existing plaster wall. A plywood back would hide the plaster wall's imperfections.

So I decided to use a 1/4 birch plywood backing, 3/4 plywood verticals and shelves, with 1 x 2 poplar facing. I started with the bottom carcase that would fit under the window. The window, of course was not level so I used a chisel to square up the window trim with the shelf carcase. Rather than losing the existing wall outlet, I moved it into the shelf and added another electrical run for later use in another part of the shelf system. I used shims to compensate for the sloped floor (i.e., whoever finished the oak floor prior to us buying the house did not sand down the outside edges as much as the visible portion).

I decided not to build carcases for the shelves that would surround the window. There were so many dimension dependencies I could have messed up here so instead of carcases, I just attach the verticals to the backer and then shifted the verticals into the exact position once I placed them on the bottom carcase. I'll make the shelves later and slide them into the dado slots.

I used my brad nailer to hold all my joints while the glue dried.

I built two more carcases for the top because it spanned more than eight feet. These just barely fit. I got extremely lucky. A problem I didn't account for was the sag in the ceiling. It didn't become apparent until I tried to slide the top carcases into place. The only way I could fit the top right carcase in was to slide it from the left, which was not fun considering I was supporting the weight of it in my arms as I climbed a step ladder. I believe it may be pushing the plaster ceiling up by a 1/16" if possible. In hindsight, I could have gotten away with making these top carcases about an inch short and just covering the gap with molding. Oh well. That's what I'll do for the other shelf sections.

Preparing The Room

Okay, I know what you're supposed to do when you prep a wall for built-in shelves. If the shelf will not cover the entire wall, you still have to remove all the trim from that wall. Then you just put it back, right? The problem with old houses is Home Depot and Lowes don't carry the old style of trim. You end up either replacing the trim in the entire room or having two different styles of trim that don't match.

I decided to only remove the trim for the sections of the wall where the shelves would fit. I used a lot of patience and a flush cut saw with teeth all the way to the end of the blade. Here is the picture molding cut...

...and the base molding after the cut.

Designing With Google SketchUp

In the past, I typically approached project design by messing with scraps of wood out in my garage. I would hold them together and imagine potential joinery. Then I would start the projects using some basic design ideas and the rest of the design would fall into place as a kind of problem solving exercise.

This time, I stumbled onto Google's free 3D modeling program, Google SketchUp.

After the 5 minute tutorial I was hooked and I managed to spend about 2 days messing with my built-in shelf design. Although, it was frusterating to waste so much time messing with the 3D design, I flushed out quite a few bad ideas and narrowed my design down to something like this for now.

Mission #2: The Bookshelf

Ever since moving into our house two years ago, most of our books have been sitting in boxes in the guestroom. Our house has great storage space but no book shelves! This is a huge problem for Melissa and I because we have a large number of reference-type books that we reference often.

The solution is obvious. Make some book shelves. However, I've been dragging my feet on this project because I haven't been able to determine which wall to sacrifice. Every wall seems to have a good reason why it isn't bookshelf suitable (air intake/vent, window, old wood paneling I don't want to cover, closet doors).

Well, we finally came up with a plan that we both agreed on. I will build book shelves in the downstairs guestroom on two walls. I'll build them around a closet door, window, and corner. We think this approach will give us enough shelf space for most of our books/magazines without interfering with the guestroom furniture.

Here is the before picture.