Overdue update

Well!

Sorry it's been so long since the last update. Busy times...

Lessee...where are we? Ah, drywall is up. Took me about 2 days to get all the drywall hung, with Allen's help. Let me tell you...drywall is, by far, the worst thing I've had to do yet. I don't know what it is about it, but I can't stand it. If you bump into it, it cracks. If you drop it, it cracks. If you're not careful carrying it and hit the doorway, it cracks. If you don't cover your mouth when you sneeze, it cracks. Ugh! You have to be careful when you're driving the screws or you'll go too far. AND the stuff weighs twice as much as a sheet of plywood. Need I go on?

Anyhoo, 2 days of wrestling wallboard and it's all hung.










Meanwhile, my wife has been busy stripping. Old moulding, that is. We want to use the old moulding around the doors and window to keep everything in line with the rest of the house, so she's been trying to get rid of the 50 layers of paint on everything. Doesn't look like an easy job. She uses stripper to take off the first couple of layers, and then a heat gun to get the rest of the ancient paint off. Not a fun job.





After all the wallboard was hung, it took me another 2 days to get it all taped an mudded. This part is just as bad as hanging the stuff, only messier. The mud gets EVERYWHERE. Also, I wasn't warned and found out too late that you have to be careful and not contaminate your mudpan, or you'll get gouges and lumps in your seams. Woohoo... Stop laughing...









Next time, the drywall is getting contracted out...

Finally, today I was able to finish up the mudding. After everything was dry I had enough time to put a couple of coats of primer on the walls, in preparation for the paint. Hopefully I'll be able to get the paint on tomorrow and can proceed to the tiling. I might go ahead and hang the lights and the mirror to give a little more light, and I won't be working up there anymore so I shouldn't have to worry about messing them up.

Ooops

An email from my mom just reminded me that I forgot to mention that all the plumbing of the tub works great. I actually tested that first thing this morning(woke up thinking about it, lol). Just wanted to mention that!

Closet

Spent the day completing the rest of the framing. This mainly consisted of rough framing for the closet door, and hanging the door itself.

I decided to expedite things by buying a pre-hung door to replace the old closet door. The old doors are actually hung right on the moulding, oddly enough, so I wasn't really too comfortable trying to reproduce that with the old material. Plus, I'm not that great to begin with at the art of door hanging. Buying a pre-hung door made it a simple matter of rough framing and nailing the new door in place.

I probably could have done more today, but I think I've picked up the bug that's going around. I woke up this morning with a sore throat and a cough that's gotten progressively worse. So I really didn't feel like working at all today, and took quite a few breaks :P. But the framing is done and the door is hung and the room is ready for drywall. Hopefully I'll feel a little better tomorrow and be able to get the drywall hung.

I've never done drywall before, so I don't really know what to estimate. My rough guess is that it'll take me all day tomorrow to get it all hung, and then the next day to tape and mud it. I expect if there are any surprises, it'll be in the taping/mudding, which means that I'll probably screw up hanging it, since all my other estimates seem to have been completely wrong. I'm also trying to resist the urge to buy a rotozip to make cutting all the holes for everything quicker and easier. I've bought way too many tools already.

Anyway, here's what the closet looks like:

Tub is in!

Finally got the tub into place. It's actually been in the room since Friday. Allen helped me get it into the room and into place. I was still kinda sick of being in the room, so that's all we did for the night.

It was pretty interesting getting the tub into the room. I had to take the moulding off of the bathroom door to make room. The room into the hallway turned out to also be about 1/2" short. I really didn't want to remove the moulding from that door as well, since the doors themselves are actually hung from the moulding and taking them off is a sure way to get an uneven door. Allen came up with great approach that let us squeak the thing thru the doorway so all is well. Not a very fun job, but we made it in.












Made great progress today. Started the day off by framing in the closet. I needed to get the tub into the room so that I could be 100% sure where to put the closet wall. Now that it's in, it was a simple matter of making some marks and laying the sills. After that, I build the corner post, and nailed up the top sills to keep everything in place. Then I was able to throw in some studs to complete the 3rd tub wall.

After that, it was just a matter of inserting the tub into the faming, SHIMMING, and screwing the tub into place.



After getting the tub secured, it was finally time to get it connected to the plumbing. Wasn't very difficult, but it took me the rest of the night...and I had to make yet another trip to HD to get a hole saw and to Lowe's to pick up some more fittings(HD doesn't carry the cpvc/MIP fittings that I like to use). Just a few tricky things...making sure the valve unit was mounted at the right depth, marking/cutting the holes for the fixtures, gluing all the joints...etc.

Unfortunately, I didn't finish the gluing until 9:30, which meant it would be 11 or 11:30(it's cold in the room) before the glue had cured and I could test the plumbing. That would be too late for me(yawn), so I decided to just install the fixtures on the tub so they'd be ready for testing tomorrow. I toyed with the idea of cleaning up a little as well, but only briefly.

Soooo, tomorrow I'll start by testing the plumbing to make sure I don't have any leaks. Then I'll probably finish up framing the closet..basically framing the door. That shouldn't take too long, so I suppose it'll be time to start on the drywall. Not really looking forward to that :).

Some details of the progress:













Oh, almost forgot I haven't posted any pics of the electrical work either. Here's a couple of snaps showing the outlets and the mirror wall with the vanity lights and switch/outlet plate. The room's still not very clean, but you get the idea :P.

Electrical finalized

Last night I was able to finish up the remaining details of the electrical work. I installed new switches and a new plate for the existing switch in the hallway to match. I also mounted and wired the boxes that will hold the vanity lights around the mirror. Not much to this...only trick was locating them correctly. Just to be safe, we temporarily mounted the mirror in place so that we could visually locate where we wanted the lights. Then it was just a matter of installing crossbraces between the studs, and mounting the boxes to the crossbraces.

Tonight I'm going to clean up the mess I made doing the wiring, and then bring in the tub. I want to use the tub itself to determine the location of the new closet wall. Once I determine that location, I can frame that wall and then install the tub itself. This should just be a matter of screwing the tub to the studs, shimming anything that's not exactly even. I'm hoping that won't take very long.

After that I'll go ahead and plumb the tub, testing it to make sure everything is hooked up correctly. Then I'll seal up the hole in the floor where the tub supply comes from the crawlspace with great stuff. Right now we have a nice draft there that ensures the room stays about the same ambient temperature as the outside :P. While I'm at it I'll probably just go ahead and seal up any gaps or voids along the perimeter of the room.

The final thing after that will be to frame the second closet wall, which is the wall that will accept the closet door. This might take some tweaking. Then again, I'm re-using the old closet door, which was just hung from the moulding around the door frame, so I don't think the actual door opening in the framing will be critical. It just needs to be close enough that I have some leeway when I'm installing the moulding for getting the door to hang right.

After that I won't have anything else to do but drywall. I suppose I've put it off as long as I can :P.

Electrical Success

The room is now wired. Everything went pretty much according to plan. I was able to use the bit of wire Allen gave me, plus some of the 12/3 I had left over from the garage to finish running all the wires. In the process, I found the old circuit for the bathroom(and I mean OLD), and completely removed all the old wiring. I removed it all the way to the panel, so that no one would be able to turn on a "dead end" circuit that just stopped somewhere in the attic. Now it's completely disconnected from the panel and all the wires removed.

Connecting everything was fairly easy. I decided to just connect everything and test it all. Surprisingly it worked the very first time. The fan switch works, the overhead light works, the vanity light switch works(and they're all oriented correctly), and all the outlets work. The only thing I have left to do is to install boxes for the 3 vanity lights. I tested that the wires supplying them work fine, I just have yet to mount the boxes. That'll involve putting the mirror in place, getting my wife to tell me where she wants them, then nailing a crossbrace in between the wall studs to which the boxes will be nailed. The light fixtures themselves will eventually be mounted to the boxes, after the drywall goes up.

We also had a little "scope creep". Now that the overhead fan/light switches are nice, new, pretty white, the other switch plate in the room, which controls the attic fans and the hallway light, looks wrong. It's a painted "brass" color, and the switches are either almond, or have just yellowed from age. They're very old. Sooooo, I get to rewire that switch tonight as well. Should be an easy fix, but those switches are ANCIENT, so lets hope I don't screw up the brittle wire when I'm wiring them. Then a coat of paint on the walls and that room should look nice. Of course the paint will have to wait until we're finished in the bathroom.

So, tonight will be spent mounting the vanity light boxes, and fixing the second switch in the hallway. Shouldn't take too long, and that's all I'm going to do tonight. I feel like I might be coming down with something...either that or I'm just tired...can't tell which. So, early to bed and maybe I'll feel better tomorrow...just in time to work on the tub :).

Also, sorry I don't have any pics...the room is still a mess from the wiring(insulation from the attic all OVER the place), and I was too tired last night to clean it up. Maybe I'll get some tonight when I finish.

Small change

Small change in plans for the wiring. I've decided to install separate switches for the light and the fan on the overhead fan/light combo. Did this for a couple of reasons: 1) the wiring is not that much more difficult, 2) I needed something to fill the second hole on the double plate where the light switch will be, and 3) It should be a little nicer being able to control them independently.

An added bonus is that the wire from the switchbox to the fan/light in this configuration requires 12/3 instead of 12/2, so I can use some leftover 12/3 that I had when I wired the garage. Not that I couldn't have used it in either case, but now I'll actually be using all the individual wires, so it's cleaner :).

Here's an updated diagram:

Electricity

Spent yesterday evening running wires in the attic. Got my bathroom circuit laid out and planned, so it's now just a simple matter of running the wire and connecting everything. I think I'm going to go ahead and connect everything so that I can test and make sure everything is ok.

I got about 80% of all the wire run last night, and connected a few junctions that were complete. I ran out of wire(was using some stuff that my father-in-law gave me). I have some that I purchased at the beginning of the project, but I don't need that much more, and I don't want to open the 250 ft reel just for 20 feet of wire. Allen found some in his garage from one of his leftover projects, so hopefully that will be enough to finish the job and I can return the 250 ft reel. That romex ain't cheap.

I also measured for and hung the outlet boxes and switch/outlet box by the mirror. I'll be working in the dark for now as well, b/c I removed the existing switch box in preparation for replacing it with the new switches. It's a double box, and I only have one switch I need to operate at that location(the overhead light/fan). So I think I'll just get another switch to put in there as a "dummy" so it doesn't look funny. This explains why, when you buy a house, there are always one or 2 switches that don't seem to do anything. I guess the next owner will puzzle over it until they take it apart and notice that it's not actually connected to anything. Another option is to wire the light and the fan separately(there's "a rat" in "separately"), which is probably the more elegant solution. I just don't know if 1) the fixture we purchased will accept that(it should, tho), and 2) I have enough wire. We'll see.

Tonight, I'll finish running the wiring, connect all the loose ends, and then test everything. If it all looks good, I'll probably just leave it on for the duration of the project. I'll probably use the old light fixture to test the lighting wiring, and just leave it up until the drywall goes in. I also have to locate my outlet tester(it's been misplaced) to make sure the outlets are wired correctly.

After this, the tub goes in and th framing for the closet. That's the last thing that needs to be done before the drywall can go in and we have an almost finished room. Stay tuned...


Oh, and if you're interested, here's the high-level wiring layout:

Quick update

Sorry I'm just getting an update in this weekend. We took the weekend off and drove up to visit my wife's family. My father-in-law was celebrating his 60th birthday on Saturday. My wife and her brother got together and signed him up for the Richard Petty driving experience at the Charlotte super speedway. What a blast that was!

Got home fairly late in the afternoon, so didn't have a whole lot of time to work. Spent the evening working on the sink wall framing. This wall was a little bit of a pain b/c I had to work around all of the drain pipes. This wall will also have the medicine cabinet, so I had to frame that in as well. I also had to add a small brace for where the pedestal sink will eventually be attached to the wall.

Didn't take too long, all in all.





Next up is the electricity. I'm hoping that, since I'll be running an entirely new circuit to the room, that everything will be fairly simple and straight forward. We'll have 2 outlets on the exterior wall, some switched lights and a switch/outlet combo on the sink wall, a ceiling light/fan overhead that'll be switched at an existing switch box. All the outlets will be gfci. Not too bad, I think. I'll probably spend tomorrow coming up with the wiring layout, then run the wiring tomorrow night. I'm not sure I'm completely confident enough to just run the wire everywhere and proceed with the rest of the room without testing everything. But I would probably spend a whole night just connecting everything, testing, and disconnecting...so we'll see.

After electricity, it'll be time to get the tub in and the closet framed. Then drywall! We're getting close :).

Framing

Progress continues. Spent some time at lunch and then after work getting the stud wall up along the brick wall. Came together pretty nicely. The only tricky part was figuring out how to frame the window, but after thinking about it for a little bit, we figured it out. Since we're adding 3.5 inches of thickness to that wall(room for electrical stuff), I had to figure out how I was going to add that thickness to the finished window. Basically, I've rough framed around it, and I'll come back later, after the drywall is in, and cover the inside surfaces with either finished stock or cabinet plywood.

The wall went up pretty quickly. It's now ready for the tub and drywall. After that, we turned our attention to the sink wall. It's a little tricky, because the drain waste vent stack is hidden in that wall. After the initial demolition, I discovered that they had originally attached 2x6 beams to the actual load-bearing stud walls, to push the wall out enough to clear the huge cast iron DWV pipe. This 6" wall is also where they'd framed around what I assume used to be a medicine cabinet. The 2x6's were in pretty bad shape so we spent the remainder of the night ripping that 2x6 wall out. This part took a little while, mainly due to how the 2x6s were attached to the roof. Was just a big pain to get them out without destroying the ceiling and the load-bearing studs to which they're attached. Got them out eventually. Then we just spent a little time cleaning up the mess.











I'll be doing basically the same thing, adding new 2x6s to the existing studs along the sink wall to clean the DWV pipe. This wall will also be framed to accept the mirror/cabinet that will be going in, and also a support surface for the pedestal sink. I'll probably start this tomorrow, and hopefully it shouldn't take very long. I just have one minor thing to deal with. The original 2x6s are actually 6 inches wide, whereas modern 2x6s are really only 5.5 inches wide. Unfortunately, they really did need all 6 inches to completely clear the largest "knuckle"(joint) in the DWV. I discovered that when I install my new 2x6s, and drywall on top of them, the drywall is not going to completely clear this joint. Luckily it's only interfering by about 1/8". We figured out a few options...1) Shim all the 2x6s along that wall to bring the drywall out just enough to clear it, 2) File down the fat part of the joint that's interfering, or 3) when installing the drywall, just carve out that back side of the drywall to create an unseen recess that will accomodate the pipe. I like #3 the best. If it doesn't work, it still won't be too late to try one of the other options. We'll see how it goes. Here's some detail of what i'm trying to describe. The topmost joint in the pic is the one interfering. It's about 1/8" wider than the edge of the 2x6s that will be nailed, on edge, to the 2x4s on either side of the pipe.



Oh, forgot to mention the other day. I decided, since I'm going to be doing a whole lot of nailing in confined spaces, that I'd break down and buy a framing nailer. They're rediculously expensive, but time is becoming a factor and I think that combined with the extra precision is worth it in the long run. It's not something I'll need a whole lot after the job, tho, so I probably won't be keeping it. And, unfortunately, I'm not "that guy" who buys a tool from HD, uses it for the weekend, and then returns it. I'd thought about renting one, but they're pretty pricey, and I'm not really going to be able to set everything up so I'll just need it for 1 or 2 days. I think I'll be needing it for a while, so renting just isn't an option. What I'll likely do is just use it for the job and then sell it when I'm finished, knocking some off the price. There should be someone looking for a good deal on one, and I can chalk the money I lose on it as a "rental" fee. I'll still come out much cheaper than if I actually rented it. So if anyone is going to be needing a nice framing nailer in a month or so, just let me know :P. That is, if I can bring myself to really sell it...it's a pretty sweet tool.



Up next: finish frmaing the sink wall. That should take no more than half a day. After that, I'll probably tackle the electricity. I'll probably try and diagram it out before I start so that I know where everything needs to go. I figure that will take me a full day to complete. After that, the tub goes in for rough fitting, which will tell me where the clost wall needs to be built. Then I can frame the closet wall and hang and plumb the tub. Then drywall! Once the dryall goes up, it'll really start to look like a room again. Only thing left after that will be to tile the floor, install the fixtures, and do the trim. We're getting there!

Subfloor!!!!!!

Finally! The subfloor is in. Took Allen and I the whole day yesterday, but we got it installed. I changed my mind from my original design. I had first thought, after some research, that 3/4" subfloor would be enough. However, there was slightly more give from the joists than I liked(flex is the enemy of tile) so I decided to switch to a 1" subfloor decking. That also meant that, in order to maintain the final height of the finished floor, without re-doing the joists(that ain't happening), I'd need to "gain" that 1/4" from the durock underlayment that will go on top of the subfloor. Fortunately, Durock comes in 1/2" and 1/4" flavors, so I could just return my 1/2" and replace it with 1/4".

After a very laborious trip to HD to return my 3/4" plywood and 1/2" Durock, I had everything I needed for the floor. We spent the day constructing the floor. This part wasn't all that difficult, just fairly tedious. The room isn't particularly square, so most of the time was spent ripping the big sheets for a good fit, and then measuring and marking for the plumbing fixtures. I also decided, for that little extra rigidity, to glue the floor to the joists. Plus I wasn't able to find 1" plywood, so I had to go with 2 layers of 1/2", with glue between that layer as well. I think this will actually work out better anyway, as it let me stagger the second layer to cover up the joints of the first layer and minimize and curling of the plywood at the edges.

So, after a long day of measuring, cutting, carrying plywood, and driving tons of screws, we now have subfloor. It's quite a change not to have to crawl around in the dirt and balance on the joists. And now I have even more room to make an even bigger mess with my tools and junk that accumulates :). And let's hope that I measured correctly for my plumbing, because the floor is in to stay :P.

Next up: Getting the tub framed in and secured in place. First order of business will be to frame the wall along the brick wall. This wall's purpose is to give me a place to put the electrical outlets, and give me a place to attach drywall and that side of the tub. In order to get this wall(this actually goes for most of the walls I'll be installing), I'll have some work to do on the ceiling area to make room for hte new top sills. Once this wall is in place, I'll bring in the tub, and measure for the third wall. The long dimension of the tub will be attached to the existing stud wall, one short dimension will be attached to the new wall along the brick, and the second short dimension of the tub will be attached to a new closet wall. I'm not confident enough of my measurements to preconstruct this closet wall without the tub being in place(even though my plumbing connections have already been set up..but i have a fair large "fudge factor" for those), so I think I'll wait until I can get the tub in to tell me exactly where to place the closet wall. Once that's in, I should be able to go ahead and plumb and test the tub. After that I complete the framing for the other 2 walls, then run the electrical, then the drywall, then the tile, and finally the fixtures. Oh, and also the crown moulding to cover up the huge mess I'm bound to make at the ceiling.

For some reason, I'm really exausted tonight, so we're taking the night off. I'm going to spend a little bit of time calibrating my miter saw since I'll be using it pretty heavily in the framing, and right now it's not making square cuts. Other than that, it's a rest night. Zzzzzzzz.....

Here are a few pics of the finished product so far:









Tub plumbing connection:



Sink/Toilet supply:



Toilet and main DWV stack:

Long awaited update

Sorry it's been so long since the last update. We've had some other things going on this week that took some time away from the bathroom.

Made some good progress today. Before today, I was really only able to a few small things...mainly getting the subfloor nailing strips in place along the perimeter of the room so that there will be support along the edge for securing the subfloor to the supports. We also purchased the tub this week. That was quite a fun trip home carrying it in my small truck. Here's the tub we picked out, although you can't really see too much since it's still gift-wrapped.





Today we were able to knock out the bathroom plumbing. This basically consisted of running the hot and cold lines to both the tub and sink areas, as well as setting up the drain system for the tub. This needed to be done now, because the next step is going to be installing the subfloor and after that I won't have access to the crawlspace anymore, plus I need to know where to cut holes in the subfloor through which all that plumbing will run. We've decided not to move the toilet any, so i won't have to do any work there...just install a new flange once the floor is in.

Finding the location of where to run everything was a challenge. The sink part wasn't too bad. The sink drain is already above the subfloor so I didn't have to do anything there. We're moving is over about 8 inches from the old one, so finding the location for where the sink supply lines was easy as well.

The tub, on the other hand, wasn't so easy. The supply lines need to be hidden in the wall between the tub and the closet. The location of this closet wall is entirely dependent on the tub dimensions. So I had to find the schematics of the tub to find the length of the tub unit, then measure that far from the wall that's going to be in front of the exterior brick wall. That gave me the location of the closet wall and where the tub supply will need to be. From that mark, I had to measure back toward the tub to determine the location of the drain for the tub.

After all these measurements were made and marked, we got busy cutting and gluing pipes. Unfortunately, the supply lines coming into the room come in at an angle, which just wreaks havoc on the placement of the room plumbing. You can only get 90 and 45 degree elbows, so we had to use some creative geometry to get everything to line up correctly. Not really hard work, just tedious and we have to measure just about every stretch of pipe. Fairly time consuming, but we eventually got it worked out. After running the lines, and installing hangers to clean everything up, we were pretty much finished for the night. It wasn't really late, but we have to wait a couple of hours for the glue to dry and by then it would have been. We'd been at it all day, so we just called it a night and will do the pressure test tomorrow.

Action shots!






Here's what everyone else was doing while we were slaving in the bathroom.









Here's the finished product.









This is somewhat interesting. The CPVC that I'm using for the supply lines has been really nice. It's super easy to work with, and really cheap. One of it's quirks, however, is that it expands somewhat when it raises in temperature. Depending on your layout, it can be somewhat significant. For instance, if you're running it though framing members(I was warned about this by someone who'd experienced it), you need to cut the hole slightly oversize to allow for the swelling, or it'll make noise when it expands. Also, according to the manufacturer's guidelines, the most significant expansion occurs along the long dimension. Specifically, it expands roughly 1 inch over 50 feet for a 50 degree temp increase. This affects how you position the pipes and attach them to framing members. For instance, it's recommended that you not place an abrupt change of direction(think elbow) against a framing member, as the stud/joist will inhibit expansion and possibly for the pipe to bend to the point of failuer. Also, and this was really the only way in which I was affected, you have to be mindful of long runs of the pipe. In my case, I'm running the hot all the way from the kitchen, which is roughly 40 feet. One either end, the long run is connected to a network of other pipes that have been secured to framing members. The expansion of this long run is enough to warrant some consideration...expansion could feasibly stress connected pipes on either end to a point of failure. The recommended solution is to add a "loop" of pipe along the run, which is nothing more than a "U" shape inserted somewhere over the length. This gives the pipe some breathing room when it expands so that it doesn't affect anything else that's connected to its ends. Here's what we did.



Anyway, I'm pretty excited to get this part out of the way. This means that tomorrow I can actually start getting the subfloor in. It'll probably take a while, since 1) the room's not square, 2) I need to cut holes for all of the plumbing, and 3) I'm going with 2 layers of 1/2 plywood for extra rigidity, but it'll be great to have floor in the room again. After that I'll build a few walls and then be able to put the tub in. Then it's electricity, drwall, fixtures, and voila! New bathroom. Sounds pretty easy, no?