Polyurythane = Non-Sticky Shelves

Have you noticed shelves with latex paint tend to stick to objects placed on them? I used my left over Minwax Wipe-On Poly on all the shelves in the bathroom for extra protection against wet stuff and to remove the latex sticky factor.

Stoop Repair

During the bathroom renovation we probably neglected the rest of the house. But the kitchen door stoop could not wait any longer. The paint had peeled away in places and I could see cracks in the wood that were taking water. It was mushy too. So rather than just repainting, I decided to scrape it and remove the rotten wood.


I wish I could have replaced the whole board but it appeared to go under the entire door jamb and would probably affect our new kitchen tile. Forget that. When I removed enough wood to see under it, I found a nest of sweet ants that were a little surprised. After evicting them I coated everything left with rotten wood hardener. Several days later I found some scraps of mahagony (left over from vanity project) that fit perfectly. I screwed and liquid nailed the scraps in place.


Finally, I covered them with Bondo, primed a few coats, painted a few coats, and caulked. Someday, I would love to add a little roof over this door to deflect the rain. But until then, this should hold.

Shower Valve Roughed Too Far Forward!

Now that all the painting and caulking is done, it was finally time to attach the shower trim plate and hot/cold lever. The wall trim plate attached fine but the lever was about an inch out away from the trim plate. After a deep breath and closer examination, I concluded that my plumber had roughed in the valve too far forward. All I could think about was what a huge pain in the ass it was going to be to rip the finished wall off to move the valve.


Clinging to the notion that everything has a workaround, I googled the problem and found someone else with the same exact situation. They even had a Moen valve and handle. In their case the plumber was also responsible for the finished wall, which is even more embarrassing. In my case, I had stuck with my detailed plans for finishing the wall so I am still blaming my plumber. Apparently, the Moen valve installation instructions must confuse plumbers. Either that or plumbers are too cocky to use the instructions. I assume it is the later.

Anyway, the other couple had posted their problem on the Terry Love plumbing forum and managed to solve it by using Moen's valve stop extension piece. The extension is actually provided for valves that are set back too far into the wall, but I guess it can also be used for the opposite. And despite the fact that Moen says to correct the valve in-wall depth instead, several Terry Love moderators seemed to think correcting the problem by using the extension was acceptable. In fact, some argue that the rough-in is still technically accurate because the trim plate fits.


Since bringing my plumber back was about the last thing in the world I wanted to do, I studied the valve and lever parts to determine if said workaround was sound. I came up with a few modifications to help improve it. Since two screws would now be exposed, I added rubber washers between the screws and the trim plate. Then I filled the extension with plumber's putty in case water dripped into it (to prevent it from flowing into the valve from the lever). Finally, despite a rubber gasket where the extension passes through the trim, I had Melissa seal it with black caulk. The caulk looks a little out of place but I prefer to error on the side of function over style.


Well, it looks a little weird but the damn thing seems to work and as far as I can tell, it should be a suitable workaround. In the end, I'm disappointed and I can't help hearing the phrase, "If you want it done right, do it yourself". Next time, I'll rough in the plumbing myself!

Roll-Away Dumpster and Old Washer Removal

Or...saying goodbye to our old bathroom for good!

We've had this pile,

the guts of the bathroom we removed, sitting in our driveway since December. I guess my plan to slowly dispose of the pile, piece by piece, via our weekly trash pick-up, was not a success. So Melissa put her foot down and rented a roll-away dumpster.


With the dumpster sitting in our driveway, we also decided it would be a good time to get rid of the old washing machine sitting in our basement. It came with the house and when we replaced it, the Sears delivery guys acted like there was no way they were going to get the thing up, out of our basement. It weighed a lot. So at the time, I said "just leave it in the basement. Some day I'll take it apart and move it upstairs in pieces. " Some day was this weekend...and it sucked. I had to cut through a one inch thick solid steele rod with a hacksaw because we couldn't get the solid metal spinning thingy detached from the base. I'm glad it's over.

Water Proof Window Trim

We had a rough time trying to figure out how to frame our glass block window to have a water tight seal. It wasn't set back far enough to frame it with tiles set back into the wall. Yet, it was set back too far to have a huge grout line. We finally decided to use rot free vinyl exterior PVC molding. I attached it with some kind of outdoor caulk adhesive. After it dried, Melissa applied grout colored caulk between the trim and the tile. Then she applied white caulk between the trim and the glass.

Threshold, Toilet Paper Holder, Shower Head

Now we're getting down to the easy cosmetic stuff. Mom and Dad bought us the toilet paper holder for Christmas.


They also got us the Shower head. This was scary to attach because I had to attach the pipe feeding the shower head. If the pipe leaks where it connects to the elbow in the wall, it will be difficult to detect. The other complication is that the thing basically screws on. Sounds easy, right? Well, it has to screw on such that it aims down on the final tightening. This proved very tricky so I wrapped the threads about 6 times with thread tape and applied a little rector seal for some extra piece of mind. I have a plan to check for leaks from a small access point behind this wall...

This is the fourth threshold I've added in this house and each gets easier. I buy the oak threshold from the flooring section at Lowes, router out any necessary areas on the bottom, cut to length, apply stain and polyurethane to match the adjacent oak floor and countersink four screws. This one is rock solid and except for all the dog hair in this photo, looks fairly good IMHO.

Vanity...Finally

Seven months after building the vanity, I am finally able to put the porcelain top on it, connect the plumbing, and put the doors on. The porcelain top mounts onto the wall. It was tricky working from inside the little vanity to tighten the mounts but somehow it worked. I like it.

P-Trap Trouble

Here is a problem I predicted would happen. To prevent it, I installed the faucet onto the vanity top, mounted the vanity top on the vanity, told the plumber the plans for the finished floor height, and told her to measure off the vanity to determine where to rough in the vanity drain discharge. I warned her that the vanity had a shelf that would be below the plumbing that would have to be considered.


Even with the above precautions, she roughed in the discharge too low. So low that there was not enough room for a proper P-trap below my sink. Grrrrrrrrr.



After switching from my 1.5" plastic P-Trap to a 1.25" chrome P-trap I gained a 1/4" but it was not enough. So I had to spend all morning with a chisel and hammer, cutting out a chunk of the shelf for the low side of the P-Trap to sit in. It was a depressing task considering I had build the vanity myself.


I did my best to carve out my hole without going all the way through the shelf because I had a drawer below it. After getting as low as I could, the pipes still connected at a slight angle that caused the gasket to leak. After 2 trips to Ace Hardware and 2 trips to Lowes, I still could not find a gasket big enough to fix my leak. I ended up buying a piece of rubber and making my own gasket with scissors and a knife. So far...no leaks. But I'm keeping an eye on it.

The Lights

Installing light fixtures must be one of the most satisfying parts of any renovation. After viewing the bathroom via the harsh florecent work light for months, it is nice to see the bathroom under the actual light it will have.

Attaching the fixtures is a piece of cake but I still have some gripes. I have yet to come across a company that accounts for "old work" electrical junction boxes. This is what us folks changing the location of the light fixtures have to replace the original boxes with. The "old work" boxes have extra stuff that usually happens to be in the way of where screws need to go to attach the new fixture. So once again, I found myself having to custom cut the screws with a hack saw...very anoying, especially since all they had to do was give me a few smaller screw sizes. Cheap bastards.

Okay, another gripe. This particular lighting company provides wire nuts that are way to large to fit through the mounting plate slots on the mounting plate they provide. This means, if you attempt to use the wire nuts they provide, you can't actually attach the light against the wall because the wire nuts will not fit (i.e., they are so big the light will stick out from the wall and the wire nuts would be visible). Are these people morons? It is easy to fix by just using your own, smaller wire nuts or cutting a hole in their metal mouting plate but the oversight is nearly impossible to catch until you've gone through the trouble of wiring the fixture and attempting to push it into place over the junction box.

One final thought on these lights. We had a hard time finding wrought-iron-style lighting fixtures so we went with these. Upon buying them, it appeared possible to mount them flipped up or down. Unfortunatly, the glass lamp shades are actually only designed to aim the light up. This is stupid because they are marketed as bathroom vanity lights. They look pretty in the picture but they actually shine more light on the ceiling than on your face (as you look in the mirror). Dumb. Another case of style over function, as is often found with home fixtures. Maybe someday we'll replace them.

The Toilet!

It's a wonderful thing! To install a toilet. So satisfying.

It was last December that we ripped out the old one to begin tearing out the concrete floor. This morning I used our newly installed Toto Drake 1.26 gallon E-Max flusher for the first time. It was wonderful. However, while I was using it Melissa was quick to note that I need to bring the bathroom door in to put back on its hinges.

When we rennovated our upstairs bathroom two years ago, I installed a Kohler toilet because it matched the Kohler style series we had picked out (i.e., sinks, towel bars, etc.). I remember the Kohlet toilet having poor instructions, coming with parts that were from the wrong toilet, and having manufacturing defects that caused major leaks. This time I did due diligence and picked out the Toto Drake, which has outstanding reviews all over the web. It's made here in Georgia but not sold by the big box stores. It was a joy to install. The instructions were detailed and the design was well thought out. All the pieces fit right and nothing leaked...at least so far.

This morning's field flush successfully cleaned out the bowl with 1.26 gallons and quietly refilled in seconds. I added the easy-close seat/lid, which seems to be the current trend. If you drop the seat or lid from the open position it catches and gently closes. Fun!

Note: I choose not to put a bead of plumber's putty around the underside of the toilet platform as suggested by most toilet installation instructions. I'm following the logic that if the wax seal fails I want to see the leak on my bathroom floor imediatly rather than having it contained within the plumber's putty (or calk as some poeple use) seal under the toilet and forced to go into nasty places.

Toilet Flange

I cut the PVC pipe for the toilet discharge with a flush saw so I could mount the closet flange onto the tile. It seems most builders say this is the preferred method (some say the top of the flange should be flush with the top of the tile). It's ridiculous there are different opinions on this, such an important part of every bathroom.

After destroying several cheap Kobalt brand glass/ceramic tile cutting drill bits from Lowes, I bought one from ACE hardware that actually worked. After about an hour of drilling I finally got six holes through the porcelain tile. I surrounded each hole with plumbers putty and filled it with water to cool the drill bit. Sometimes the water boiled from the heat. That porcelain is tough stuff! I drilled 1/4" holes so the screws would clear them and pull tight against the wood. I used the purple PVC primer and PVC paste to attach my metal ring flange and screwed it securely to the floor. And now I've got a rock solid attachment point for my toilet.

Compression Fittings and Flanges

I added a compression fitting to the roughed in copper toilet supply line. The usual drama occurred when I began cutting through the copper pipe with my hack saw. Even though I turned off the main water line and opened the kitchen sink facet, water sprayed out onto the bathroom floor. I yelled for Melissa to turn on an outside hose and that seemed to do the trick.

Before the compression fitting goes on, you have to put on the flange (the little decorative skirt thing between the tile and the fitting valve). I think they're called escutcheons too. I bought a pretty chrome deep flange made by Keeney & Duracraft Plastics from Lowes. The sealed package said 5/8" OD 1/2" copper pipe but the flange hole was about 1/2". After banging a scrap of copper pipe through the flange with a hammer and using tin snips to force the hole open, I got it to fit. But it looked like crap as a result of the trauma. This was more or less to prove to myself that Keeney had given me the wrong product (or Lowes somehow messed it up).

So I used another white plastic 5/8" OD 1/2" copper pipe flange I had for the sink. It was correctly labeled and fit! The compression fitting went on fine, so I shut its valve off and turned on the main water. I yelled up to Melissa "is it leaking?". She yelled back "Yes!". I yelled back "You've got to be kidding!!!". She yelled back "Maybe it's not leaking, I think it was just a shadow".

Trim

The base molding was easy. I used the coping saw method for the inside corners and the wood putty method for the outside corners (joke). Of course all the walls were far from square. With 5 inside corners and 2 outside corners, there were lots of cuts. I added shoe molding to the base molding to match the style of the house. This was even easier. The nail gun is a life saver with trim.

Okay, and then comes the crown molding....Hate it! This was a real nightmare but we had to do it because the shower tile didn't terminate against the ceiling very gracefully. Crown molding would be the only way to fix this. Each cut felt like a shot in the dark...like I had a 50/50 chance of doing it right. I built a little jig on my miter saw to get the angles right but not only did I have to deal with non-square walls...the ceiling sags in the middle and is way uneven.

Wood putty and caulk. That is so much easier than trying to custom rip each piece of molding to follow the contours of the ceiling and walls.


A few coats of paint later and we've got decent looking molding!

Priming and Painting

Painting sucks. It takes so many steps and can look like crap when done poorly. Fortunatly, Melissa doesn't mind doing it and she does a good job.

First she taped builders paper over all the shower and floor tile. Then she painted on two coats of Zinsser primer on the walls and ceiling. Then she painted the ceiling with ceiling paint and taped around the chair rail shelf and shelves above the vanity. After this, she painted the drywall above the chair rail shelf and the tongue and groove below it.


After examining countless paint chips, we settled on two greenish grayish colors, one slightly darker than the other (for the tongue and groove planks). Unfortunately, once on the walls, the two colors look nearly identical. Oh well.

Finally, Melissa switched the tape around and painted the chair rail shelf, shelves above the vanity, and the door casing molding.


Upon removing the tape, some of the paint came away...yikes. This will be touched up.


She's done for now. But she'll have to tape and paint again after I hang the crown molding, base molding, corner molding, and door (which I had to remove so I could cut the bottom off...it didn't fit with the new tiled floor height).

Shelves and Durham's Water Putty

This weekend I finish the last of the shelves; a stack of four more. I sanded all the wood and filled all the nail holes with Durham's Water Putty. Durham's was great. It smelled nice, very doughy and was a joy to work with. This week I'll sand down the parts I puttied over and Melissa should be ready to start priming by Saturday.

Grout!

Melissa read up on how to grout and spent most of the day grouting the shower. I worked on building the chair rail shelf and listened to Melissa grunt and groan.

Later, I joined in and we finished most of the shower (didn't have time to do the floor or curb).

The next day Melissa mixed up unsanded grout, which we needed to use for the floor because the tiles have less than 1/8" gaps between them. After the floor, I joined in and we grouted the curb and the bathroom floor. Several days later, I applied a first coat of grout sealer and wiped it down. Finally, the next day I applied a second coat of grout sealer and wiped it down. Whew! That's it for the tile!

In conclusion, tiling is not a weekend project. It has many different tasks that all need ample uninterupted drying time before moving on to the next task. That is, if you want it done right.

Tiling the Floor

Once the holes were cut for the toilet discharge and intake, the rest was very easy. Since we will be adding base board, the accuracy of the cuts was not important. This made the measuring and cutting go quicker and I could keep up with Melssa's tile laying. Somehow, we ended up fairly square with the tiles. I was quite surprised.

I also cut an oak threshold to fit and used it to determine where the tile in the doorway should terminate. This turned out to be much easier than my usual technique of finishing a job and then thinking, oh, how am I going to transition to the other floor?

Planning for the Floor Tile

After staring at the floor for hours we finally came up with a plan and drew some guide lines to help us. Tile should look good when one enters the room but we thought it should also look good in the space between the toilet and vanity. This would be the longest space. To keep it from looking too long and narrow and to hide our unsquare walls, we decided to use the brickwork pattern we used on the shower walls.

After lots of Google image searches for pictures of brickwork tile floors, I realized nobody seems to be doing this. Oh, well, we think it will look more interesting...

Bathroom Floor Backerboard

Finally, something went smoothly!

Going through the trouble of laying two sheets of plywood for the subfloor made us comfortable laying 1/4" backerboard. Despite my hatred of the 1/2" Hardibacker, I decided to give the 1/4" stuff a try. It was sooooo much easier to work with. Lightweight and easy to score and break on a straight edge. After getting the toilet discharge and water intake holes cut in the proper place, the rest was easy.

Melissa mixed up the dryset thinset (I think that's what it's called), spread it on the subfloor, and I layed each cut backerboard in place, leaving 1/8" gaps around edges. The Hardibacker screws were available with square head drivers and they went in like dreams. No stripping like the Philips head wall screws Lowes carried. Now it's ready for some tile!

Then we can finally tile the shower curb. Despite the fact that every DIY site fails to say so, logically, it seems better to do the bathroom floor before the shower curb so water running down the curb will land of the floor tile rather than a grout line or silicone bead.

Tiling the Shower Floor

We finally got the shower floor tiles and started laying them. It was not as easy as I hoped. Once down, we realized the drain strainer had been set too low. I guess we didn't expect the thinset to raise the tiles so much.



We decided to fix this by removing the tiles surrounding the strainer and digging out the top layer deck mud a little. This will make the slope around the drain a little steeper than the rest of the floor but I'm hoping it will also be more comfortable to stand on with bare feet. Less chance to stub your toe or kick a tile loose!