Anyway, the re-plumbing job is finally a complete success. I started the day today by draining the water heater. Even tho we now have %95 new lines in the house, the water in the washing machine and sink was still coming out a nice pretty rust color. I figured the only place it could be coming from would be the water heater, so I decided to flush it out. I cut the water off at the main, opened a hot line at the washing machine, attached a hose to the drain of the water heater, and opened the drain valve. Nothing. For some reason, I could not get the thing to drain. After fussing with it for a minute or two I decided there must be a blockage of sediment that was preventing the flow. This was confirmed when I turned the water on at the main to give it some back pressure. Much sputtering, then a nice steady flow. It took about 20 minutes for the water to begin to run clear, but after that, all is well. We now have clean water.
Next order of business was to install a new kitchen sink faucet. I'd completely screwed up the old one when I over-torqued one of the supply hoses reconnecting it. It was a very cheap one, and instead of the internals and connections being cast brass, like the nicer ones, they're made from soft copper tube with threads soldered on. Didn't take much force for me to completely kink it, leading to my hot-side pressure issues at the sink. Long story short, a new faucet installed and everything is rosy again. In fact, it's better than it ever has been. We can run the washing machine, dish washer, and the sink simultaneously with negligible impact to any of them. Nice.
Next up was starting the structural framing. Woohoo! We're actually building now instead of demolishing or repairing. Feels pretty good to be cutting and nailing wood at last.
Anyway, Allen and I spent a little bit of time thinking about how we were going to lay everything out, and measuring. Pretty soon we had a plan together. We're going to use some existing footings to support two new girders on the opposite sides of the room. One will be a doubled 2x8 along the exterior wall, and the other will be a sister to the existing one on the door side of the room. Then we'll nail double 2x6 joists on 16" centers between the two. Should make for a nice strong, stable support for the subfloor and the eventual tile.
Took us a while to get the girders in place. Nothing in the room is level or square so we had to do quite a bit of shimming. We measured for the tops of the girders based on the level of the adjacent floor in the hallway, subtracting for the 3/4" subfloor, the 1/2" durock, 1/4" for the tile, and ballparked 1/8" for the thinset. I think that if I can get the floor within 1/8 of the other floor(up or down), I'll be satisfied. After quite a bit of measuring, levelling, and shimming, the girders were in place and level.
Allen had to run eat dinner with his family so I continued on for a little while alone. I'm going to be using joist hangers to hopefully make it easier to get everything level, and probably make it more sound and secure than my pitiful toenailing skills could accomplish. They seem to be pretty easy to use.
I hung one hanger using a small double 2x6 blank to help me get it positioned so that the joist would be flush with the girder. Then I doubled up 2 2x6's and cut them to length. I was able to hang one end of the joist in the already-hung hanger while I positioned and secured the other, making sure the joist was level. Not too bad. The rest of the joists will be slightly more challenging since they'll not only have to be level themselves, but also level in relation to their neighbors. I can get it really close by using the top of the girder as a reference, since the girders are level, but I think being picky here and levelling them individually will pay off with a nice level floor in the end. Also, the joist I hung was the middle joist. I thought that I'd hang it first, then work toward the walls on both sides. I think I like this idea better than starting on one side and working all the way across the room. I tend to have more success when I minimize measurements taken off of other measurements, which just seems to increase error the father you go. I figure that if my margin of error is 1/16(i wish :) ), and I measure 4 times off of an initial baseline, I could end up with a possible 4/16, or 1/4", error if I'm unlucky and err the same way each time. That's in the significant range. Long story short, running the middle joist first and working from both sides toward the wall, versus starting at one wall and working all the way across, cuts my possible error in half. Sounds good to me :P.
After hanging the middle joist, I was starting to get really hungry so I decided to call it a night. Here's some shots of where we are:
Pretty good progress for today I think. Feels good to actually start the construction phase of the project. Shouldn't take too long to get the joists finished up. After that will be to finish plumbing the room, running all the supply and waste lines to the general area of where the fixtures will be. I have to do that while I still have access, which means before the subfloor. After I have the plumbing approximated, it'll be time to lay the subfloor. I can't wait for that...I think when I don't have to look at the nasty crawlspace and AC jungle, it'll start feeling like an actual room again instead of a disaster area. One day at a time :).
No comments:
Post a Comment