Everyday Adventures

Progress: It’s Electric!

The Gingerbread Diaries

(Today, Thursday, is my “Friday” since I’m off work tomorrow to prep for the party. Since I doubt I’ll even think about blogging tomorrow, I wanted to get this update written up now.)

Can you guess what Todd worked on this week?

If you said wiring, you’d be right. On Saturday he ran all the new lines he needed, wired new switches and outlets and started the box for the light.

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On Sunday he finished the “light box”– a framework or soffit that will allow the overhead light to sit level despite the fact that the ceiling will be sloped. We certainly could have mounted it flush with the joists, but I was worried about it casting weird shadows in the room.

While Todd worked on that, I trimmed the drywall to form the corner of the new wall–anything to get us closer to a completed bathroom.

Wall!!

Wall!!

Now, in order to hook the new everything into the existing wiring, he had to open up another portion of the hallway ceiling. So we have another hole in the house, but this one led to pretty quick results and we now have the hall light switch at the back door instead of 5 feet away. No more stumbling into the hallway to find the light switch–how novel!

Peek-a-boo!

Peek-a-boo!

A light switch in a logical place--not so common in this house.

A light switch in a logical place–not so common in this house.

And as he was finishing up with the bulk of the wiring, I asked about the bathroom light (it still isn’t installed). Namely, if it would be installed before this weekend. Turns out he needs to cut a piece of drywall to fit the bottom of the box/soffit before he can install the light.

Need, of course, is subjective. If he doesn’t cut the drywall to size and install it with the light, he’ll have to take the light out when we drywall the ceiling. And that makes total sense, right? “Might as well do it right,” he says.

And I realize… “might as well” is part of the reason this project is far exceeding its 9-week timeline. (Well, that and the floor surprises and other things we had to do in a very if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie way that we weren’t expecting.) Scope creep, man, it’s real.

And I can’t even be mad–at Todd or the project in general–because of course I want to do it right the first time and not half-ass it. Of course I don’t want to make more work or have to undo work to proceed with the rest of the project.

And yet…

But, no, the reason why I really can’t be upset about the scope creep is that I started it.

I totally did.

“Might as well” may be synonymous with scope creep, but so are “why don’t we” and “while we’re at it.” And two months ago I reopened the discussion on the bathroom renovation with “why don’t we install a pocket door” and “while we’re at it, why don’t we bump out the wall to meet the pipe chase.” This entire project has a foundation in scope creep.

I don’t know why I’m surprised.

There are three things I’d really love to see happen before 2pm on Saturday (when our guests are expected to arrive), and preferably well before then (as before as you can get in 48 hours, several of which will be spent at work or sleeping, pfft):

  1. Overhead light installed (with or without drywall)
  2. Sink installed (keeps getting pushed back for larger projects, completely understandable)
  3. Door facing and hardware

That third one’s kind of a biggie. See, right now, if you close the door to have it meet the other side of the doorway, it comes loose of it’s little guides, and just swings on its tracks. Even with the door facing there’s a 2″ or so gap. Thankfully we figured out last night that a 2×4 and the facing should fix that gap and allow the door to close without leaving its guides. And then we still need to set the hook and latch deal that keeps it closed.

Obviously, beyond those three items, we won’t be working on the renovation further this week, and I hope Todd will take the next week off to just chill. We shall see. I mean, I don’t want the project to languish for months or anything, but once the basics are covered I think we can take some time and approach the rest on a less frenetic, less hurried pace.

And thank goodness the next project is 100% outdoors!

All in All It’s Not a Brick in the Wall

The Gingerbread Diaries

Because our walls are drywall, you see.

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Or, at least these are. The rest of the house is mostly plaster on lathe with some sheetrock repairs here and there. But I digress.

Week 8 has wrapped and we finally have the beginnings of walls going up!

(Direct link for the feed readers: GBD 2.10 | Bathroom Renovation, Week 8: Going with the Flow)

Now, I thought we’d be tackling the wall earlier rather than later, but hindsight (lovely thing) says that leaving this wall as a bare frame while we worked on everything else made a lot of things easier while we were still knocking around. But a very important thing happened this week:

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We installed the new toilet. And since we do respect bathroom privacy in this house, a wall became kind of necessary pretty quickly. Plus, with the party only a week away, we figure our guests would appreciate walls, too. Just a bit…

We spent a good amount of time under the house on Saturday prepping the rest of the supply lines for the toilet, sink, and tub. I cut CPVC pipe and insulation to the lengths Todd called out–it was nice to be useful. I also had my phone out, playing music because music makes everything better, only to be punished for that effort when the phone slipped from my hands as we were crawling out from under the house and landed, face down, on the edge of a brick.

Casualty count: 1 Droid Maxx phone screen. Damn.

(And, of course, I’m only 3 months away from an upgrade so, yeah, I’m going to try to deal with the cracked screen until then rather than pay the exorbitant insurance fee for a replacement. I’ve got a screen protector on it, now, that’ll keep me from glass splinters. It’s not pretty, but it still works just fine.)

We also trimmed two sheets of drywall that evening for the section of interior wall behind the commode and the doorway opening between the bathroom and my office. After 7 weeks it was suddenly very strange not to be able to talk to Todd through that opening when I was at my desk and he was working in the other room! Still, I’m glad that we’ve got it filled in.

Apparently we’re doing the drywall the “wrong” way, but ask me if I care right this second?

Todd tells me, after we’ve cut the first few panels, that you’re supposed to use the 4’x8′ panels sideways and stack them so that they run perpindicular to the studs. That last part makes sense for stability and stress and all that, but for the sake of efficiency, if you have a space that’s less that 4’x8′, it makes absolutely no sense to chop a panel into sections and fit them in when one tall piece will work. And you’ll see in that first photo that we ignored those instructions, again, when covering the studs for the pocket door and will, probably, continue to do so for the rest of the dividing wall. The skinny strips left over from the first panels will work great for building the new corner of the room.

Rules are rules, but loopholes are loopholes. And common sense trumps even that some days.

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Todd’s last task for the week was to fill in those gaps between the new subfloor and the exterior walls. This blocks all those problematic drafts and will keep the insulation that will be added when we do the drywall from sliding down to the ground.

The to-do list for this weekend is to get the rest of the dividing wall in place, I’ll add some privacy film to the window, we’ll get the sink mounted on the recessed wall and hooked up, and maybe even get the new outlet and switches wired.

But with the party next weekend, I’ll be focusing on getting the rest of the house tidied up, decorating the dining room for our luau theme, and starting the food prep!

I Tackled The Tile!!!

The Gingerbread Diaries

Yes, that absolutely requires three exclamation points.

Y’all, as many small, behind the scenes things we’ve accomplish over the last 6 weeks–and there have been plenty–the only thing, so far, that looked like real forward progress at first glance was framing in the new wall. And that was weeks ago!

But now, now I have something I can point to and not only claim ownership of (I was feeling very third wheel on a lot of the progress to date) but it signifies a major leap ahead in the finishing of the room (even though we’re nowhere close to being finished).

I present to you… our floor.

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Tiled. Grouted. Done!

Since we laid the Hardie backer on Thursday night, that meant we could tile pretty much any time on Saturday. First, though, we needed a trip to Lowe’s for a few more things (including a bit to cut the holes for tub drain and supply lines through the cement board, since we didn’t do those ahead of time… for reasons) and then I needed to dry fit the tile.

Now, our tile came in sheets but it’s not on a mesh like some of the super-small tile patterns, it’s more like strong glue spacers behind the tile pattern? Easily cut with a utility knife. I started my dry fit in the back left corner of the room (the commode quadrant, if you will) and tackled the left border of the room as this was where most of the fiddly bits were for the plumbing lines. The compound tile nippers we picked up that morning were nice and easy to work with and fitting around the pipes was pretty simple.

The dry-fit, minus the part just in front of the door.

The dry-fit, minus the part just in front of the door.

The worst fitting problem was with the air vent–the interior corners were a bitch to cut, since two of them fell squarely into the larger octagons, and I had to recut one of them and piece it in. Such a pain. (And even after tidying up the hole post-grout, the vent still isn’t sitting in properly. I’m probably going to have to chisel out some of the tile. Grrrr!)

Except for that first line of tiles along the left side of the room, every other edge had to be trimmed since the room, despite appearing squared off, isn’t. So it took quite a good chunk of time to fit all of the tile edges to the plywood edges, and I had to send Todd back to Lowe’s (for the third trip of the day) for 5 more sheets of tile to finish out the dry fit of the front, doorway-side edge of the room.

But! Dry fitting everything meant that the actual tiling process went pretty quickly. Having everything already cut, and then stacking each column of tile last to first, and stacking them in a row just outside the room meant I could lay down the mortar for a row, then grab the pre-cut tiles, and just keep on trucking. It made for a long Saturday, but it felt good to get it done!

You can see where the excess mortar creates a slight haze over the tiles. It's a learning experience.

You can see where the excess mortar creates a slight haze over the tiles. It’s a learning experience.

Of course, this was my first time tiling a floor, so mistakes were definitely made. My mortar application wasn’t 100% even, with some deeper pockets here and there, and the excess mortar squished up between the gaps in the tile pattern. On the first row I tried to clean up as I went, but that just made for more of a mess. I’m still not sure that was the right decision, because I spent 6ish hours or so (however long it takes to watch/listen to Fuller House, season 1–all of it) on Sunday afternoon chipping away the mortar that had squished up enough to block where the grout needed to go.

At least the mortar cleaned up easily from the tops of the tiles it got onto.

I'm a messy cook, and a messy tiler, too!

I’m a messy cook, and a messy tiler, too!

After hours of chipping away, I was no longer in the mood to grout, so Monday night, as soon as I got home, I threw on my mortar-encrusted work jeans, strapped on my knee pads, and got to grouting.

Okay, a word about knee pads. We each bought pairs of heavy-duty gel knee pads for the renovation work, and I did wear mine during the dry fit and tiling. But they’re really only comfortable for a few hours. At that point it doesn’t matter how thick the gel padding is, the fact that the base of your knees and the tops of your shins have no natural padding of their own starts to come into play. And the straps of said knee pads eventually work themselves into a single spot behind your knee and start to create friction burns from the shifting as you crawl along the floor.

Almost a week later and my knees still hate me.

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TEC Design FX Stain Proof Grout in 922 Silver

Back to grouting. The grout we chose is probably my favorite thing, so far, of the entire project. Dude. It’s disco ball sparkly! It’s pre-mixed, ready to go, and despite smelling like hair dye, it was really easy to work with. Grouting took a total of 2 hours, so not bad at all, and the change it made in the room was amazing! I mean, yes, the contrasting grout lines highlight where my spacing got off (the spaces we bought, the only ones Lowe’s carried, only work with square tiles, so were pretty much useless with the octagonal tiles that made up the majority of our square footage), but I don’t even care! Not only will the darker grout not show dirt as easily as white would have, it sparkles!

Can you see the sparkle? It's there, I promise!

Can you see the sparkle? It’s there, I promise!

Plus, most of it is going to be covered up or obscured by the tub, commode, sink, and rug. Uneven spacing is not the end of my world.

Speaking of the rug situation, I totally scored at Tuesday Morning (which I visited on Tuesday night). I had some time to kill before Beer & Cheer so I popped in to pick up a couple things for Todd’s upcoming birthday party and look at their rugs. I found two that had the burnt orange color I was interested in and the approximate size, but I wasn’t sure which one Todd would like so I bought then both. Thankfully–this is TM, afterall–the larger rug was $20 and the smaller one was $15, and if Todd hated them, I could easily bring them back.

The perfect rug would be the size of the one on the right with the pattern of the one on the left. But perfection is overrated.

The perfect rug would be the size of the one on the right with the pattern of the one on the left. But perfection is overrated.

Turns out, we like both of them for different reasons, so we’re keeping both, and we’ll swap them out at will. The larger rug is an indoor/outdoor rug, so super sturdy, which will be good for when we entertain and this room gets more traffic. The smaller rug is 100% cotton, so will be easy to clean and probably be the day to day rug choice. They both have two shades of orange and the grey in each kind of picks up the silver of the grout. I’m really happy to have that out of the way and to have gotten such a great deal on them!

So what was Todd doing while I was fussing with tile? He was under the house working on the supply lines for the tub, commode, and sink. Everything is now measured and cut, just needs to be assembled. Unfortunately, Thursday (when we thought he’d get home early enough to install them) he came home with a bad toothache and swelling and, yeah, not really in the mood to work. Poor guy!

The goal for the weekend is to get the toilet installed and put up the wall between the hall and the bathroom (and the old doorway to my office), since that’s the bare minimum of what needs to happen before the party in 2 weeks. Ideally, we’d be able to get the sink installed, too (though we’re having trouble finding the right faucet at the moment), and get the drywall up inside the bathroom so the walls look semi-finished, but that’s technically optional. The wall also involves the insulation (which we bought this week) and installing the vent fan, so we’ll just have to see how far we can get.

Here’s hoping Todd can get into the dentist today and will be feeling better soon!

PS! The videos are now up for weeks 5 & 6 in last week’s post. This week’s video will be up much more timely, I hope!

Oh, Calamity!

The Gingerbread Diaries

Or, in other words, a belated house update. (Was it Trixie Belden who said “Oh, calamity” when things went wrong?)

So the other thing, besides the issue of gaping holes in the house during the coldest month of the year (and, yes, the heating bill was shockingly high this month), that can upset a winter remodeling project is the increased chance of seasonal illness. I figured there was a good chance one of us would come down with something during the project, I just didn’t expect us to both get sick at the same time. With slightly different strains of the flu/cold/upper respiratory mess that’s going around.

The good news is that we’re both on the mend and that progress only slightly slowed during our respective downtimes. I cannot take any credit for that, though, since I spent the past Friday through Monday basically holding down the couch while Todd missed hardly any work and kept chipping away at the plumbing and flooring projects.

The really excellent news is that, by 11pm last night, things were looking decidedly up!

Hardie Backer is down!

Hardie Backer is down!

Let’s back up a bit…

Week 5

(Direct link for the feed readers: Episode 2.7: Downstairs Bath Renovation, Week 5)

At the beginning of the fifth weekend it became clear that there really was no way to leave the toilet in place and do the room in pieces as I’d originally hoped. Le sigh. So we ripped out the rest of the floor (it went so much quicker than the first half), got it leveled out, and by the end of the day Sunday we’d cut and put down the other half of the new subfloor.

The neighbor was out on his porch Sunday afternoon as we were getting ready to cut the plywood and remarked “This is how you spend Valentine’s Day?” Yes, yes it is (was).

And the obligatory juvenile joke I couldn’t help making (but not meaning): At least the floor got laid!

Moving on…

It was the Tuesday night after that Todd suddenly came down with that deep-chest, rumbly, can’t stop it once it starts coughing. Just absolutely out of the blue. Unfortunately Wednesdays are must-work days for both of us (pesky co-workers wanting to get paid every week, sheesh!) so he had to go in for at least half a day and the same on Thursday. By Friday, though, he was doing loads better. Still coughing and easily tired, but as wuick as the worst came it went.

Not so for me. On Thursday afternoon I started feeling a little feverish at my desk and it just kept going downhill from there. Unlike Todd’s chest cold/flu/something, mine stayed up in my head (in the sinus region, not my imagination) and I battled chills for over an hour that night before finally settling down. I was shaking so bad that I could have charged a quarter a minute (Magic Fingers reference anyone?).

Fortunately for me, I was between deadlines and things had been kinda slow at work so I called in sick Friday and floated between fever dreams and listlessness for the next 3 days. And since the fever reared it’s ugly head again after an exploratory trip to the grocery store Sunday afternoon, I stayed home Monday, too. (Otherwise I could have ended up on the wrong side of my boss’s very lovely wife, had I still been contagious and gotten him sick!)

Week 6

(Direct link for the feed readers: Episode 2.8 Downstairs Bath Reno, Week 6)

My “lost weekend” kicked off Month 2 of the renovation project, and Todd kept chipping away at the work to be done. With the subfloor in place and the plumbing mostly roughed-in (we still have to make the spaces for the tub drain, etc.) Todd got started dry-fitting the Hardie Backer into the room. It’s gridded, so the easiest way to shape and section it is by scoring along the cut lines and either bending it to snap or hammering out the voids. Slow work, but worth it.

On Sunday he drove to Tallahassee and back twice to rent (then return) the tool he needed to remove the cast iron vent pipe (aka the last of the old fittings from the room). It’s a ratcheting chain gizmo that you’ll see in action on the video that we tried to find for the previous plumbing repairs but had no luck with. Turns out Home Depot rents this $500 tool for only $30 a day and Todd had the old pipe sectioned and sorted in a few hours. Not too shabby, even with the half tank of gas added in.

Which brings us to last night.

Over dinner I asked if he had brought work home or was planning to work in the bathroom. I didn’t mind either way (dude works hard in all respects, I’m certainly not going to push him harder, especially when he’s still recovering, too!), but I did point out that if we didn’t put the Hardie Backer down until Friday night, we wouldn’t be able to tile until Sunday (it requires 24 hours for the mortar to cure), and if we waited until Saturday it would be next week before we could start on finishing the floor. And the longer the floor took, the longer it would be before we could install the new commode. We’d managed okay with only the one bathroom over the last 2 weeks, but we both agree that it’ll be nice to regain the second set of fixtures.

Again, not pushing, just discussing our options.

I had a project due for Helmar that I needed to get written up (another reason I wasn’t pushing), so I went to my desk to do that and was only semi-surprised when Todd came down in work clothes and started prepping the floor and mortar.

Basic steps to laying down Hardie backer (aka cement board)

  • Sweep subfloor clean
  • Wipe subfloor with a damp sponge
  • Mix mortar to peanut butter consistency and let sit for 10 minutes (okay, do this first so you can do the other two steps while the mortar sets up)
  • Apply mortar with a 1/4″ notched trowel to subfloor in 3’x5′ (ish) sections, laying each board as you go (and try not to work yourself into a corner)
  • Leave 1/8″ gap between pieces of cement board
  • Screw down cement board at 8″ intervals (a 52 sq ft room will take more than 200 screws!)
  • Fill seams with mortar and reinforce with mesh tape (just like drywall seams).

Once I finished with my Helmar project I really wanted to play in the mud mortar–it looked like fun! So I grabbed the trowel and started on a second patch while Todd was situating the first larger board. Then I went upstairs and put on work jeans because, yeah, doing that in a skirt wasn’t really the best idea.

Troweling mortar is a lot like icing a really big cake. I loved it. Tiling tools could take some pointers from cake decorators, though. I was this close to sacrificing one of my offset spatulas to the cause while doing the seam filling and taping–the putty knife I was using got the job done but was not ideal.

The plan for this weekend is that Todd will work on the supply lines, etc. for the plumbing while I set the tile on Saturday. Sunday we’ll grout and maybe by Monday we can install the new toilet and sink. That would be pretty fabulous!

Plumbing the Depths of Tile Installation

The Gingerbread Diaries

(Direct link for the feed readers: Downstairs Bath Renovation, Week 4)

So, I did it, I got brave and looked at our original timeline to see just how far behind we are, here at the end of week 4:

  • Week 1: Take the room down to studs
  • Week 2: Build new wall
  • Week 3: Electrical and plumbing
  • Week 4: Drywall and painting

Yup, we’re behind!

Granted, replacing the subfloor was never on my list, so that bumps things back a week on its own (2 if we’re being honest, because we only have half the subfloor replaced). If we adjust for that additional task, which we’ll call the new week three between wall framing and electrical/plumbing, we’re only functionally 1 week behind.

Or something like that…

My precious! I hope I love these switches as much in use as I do in theory! | image via House of Antique Hardware

My precious! I hope I love these switches as much in use as I do in theory! | image via House of Antique Hardware

The electrical and plumbing aren’t done, yet, but I have high hopes for that to be checked off this weekend. We’ve ordered the pretty button switches and plates only to have the double plate be on backorder until April.

This, but in brushed nickel finish. | image via House of Antique Hardware

This, but in brushed nickel finish. I hope. | image via House of Antique Hardware

Todd’s looking into what our options are to speed that up (we could have the rest of the order shipped without it and fix up a stand-in until the one we want is available OR we could get a different finish and I could paint it, those are the top contenders at the moment). It isn’t the end of the world, but it’s a delay we weren’t expecting.

Todd’s been working on the plumbing for the new layout this week and since that’s not something I’m all that helpful with I suggested that while he was doing that, maybe I could go ahead and get started on the tile floor. Sounds good, right?

Wrong!

It’s been a week of research into underlayments and waterproofing and tile sizes. See, we bought a roll of DITRA as an underlayment but they didn’t have the tape that you’re supposed to seal corners and edges with (lets ignore, for the moment, that to seal the gaps we’d also need the drywall up–details!). So I was doing some reading about installation on the manufacturers website and saw that they had a minimum tile size of 2″ to use with the DITRA. Well, the octagons are that big, but the square tiles are not, and the size of the waffle pattern on the DITRA could mean it’s not supplying the right amount of support for the smaller tiles.

Reminder of the tile we picked. Simple, not fussy, though it'll look more interesting with the silver grout we picked.

Reminder of the tile we picked. Simple, not fussy, though it’ll look more interesting with the silver grout we picked. (Yes, it’s listed as wall tile, but it has a PEI of 4, which is perfectly fine for moderate to high-traffic floors.) | Image via Lowe’s

The good news is that we get to return the DITRA (that stuff is expensive!) and don’t need the tape, either. Instead we’re going with a layer of cement board (the preferred underlayment for small tiles as near as we can tell). The cement board is water durable, though we’re also wondering about waterproofing between that and the plywood subfloor. Now I’m thinking a treatment would be better than, say, a layer of plastic sandwiched between–we’ll see what consensus we come to.

I suppose the bright side to all of this is that we discovered this NOW as opposed to when we were knee deep in tile-time. My attempt at being proactive actually let us research an area of the project we’re both pretty new to without setting the project back further. So, yeah, that’s what I’m going with.