{"id":1946,"date":"2009-09-06T09:16:22","date_gmt":"2009-09-06T13:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=1946"},"modified":"2020-05-09T07:11:12","modified_gmt":"2020-05-09T11:11:12","slug":"home-repairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2009\/09\/06\/home-repairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Repairs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019re in the end-run on the bathroom. We\u2019re going to have our bed moved to the house on Friday, and we currently have an entirely gutted bathroom with no other shower in the house. We have toilets and sinks downstairs, but we have no functional shower. We lose the use of the apartment on Oct 1. Jen and I are totally cool (okay, not \u201ctotally,\u201d but pretty okay for a couple weeks) with showering at the gym or at the hospital. However, our first houseguest arrives that week, and we\u2019ve got guest-comfort as a consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So: I\u2019ve got a stack of tasks to do to take this studs and joists shell to \u201cusable bathroom.\u201d I\u2019ve got a couple of competent contractors lined up, but I would also like to save money wherever possible. I would appreciate any wisdom from the peanut gallery on which of these tasks are hard \/ impossible for the casual home handyman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mere sympathy would also suffice. Mockery for the fact that we enthusiastically destroyed the perfectly functional, though ugly, tub can wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) \u201cSister\u201d the floor joists to level the foor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The existing joists have been cut to hell and gone by previous plumbers. Instead of drilling through the boards, they notched them. This can\u2019t be good structurally. In addition, the whole room slopes slightly. We figure that by installing a second joist face to face with the old ones we can solve both of those problems. The claim is that this is work intensive, and rather important \u2013 since everything else literally rests on the joists \u2013 but I think it\u2019s totally do-able.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) Re-plumb everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re gonna have to remove all the existing plumbing to sister the joists. This is fine, because the existing plumbing is a total hack job anyway. We\u2019ve got this roll of copper pipe that meanders above the drop ceiling in the kitchen and up through the plaster \/ bathroom floor to feed the entire room. We\u2019re certainly going to pay a plumber to make a straight shot up from the basement through one of the awesome access chutes (I can see from the attic to the basement at a couple of places) with real pipe and tie everything. He\u2019ll tie that in correctly under the bathroom floor. At the same time, we\u2019re gonna move the shower fixtures to the opposite wall, and make the existing partition wall a 3\/4 wall to let air move around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Shiny new electrical work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can totally do this part. I need a new ceiling fixture so we can have a shower light and a sink light on the same pair of 3-way switches. Then I need an additional switch to control the new vent fan, and an outlet so the ladies (and ) can blow dry their hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only part of this that I haven\u2019t done before is the vent fan. Does anyone know if I can send the output from a vent fan into the duct that comes out the back of a dryer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Subfloor. Once the plumbing and electrical are in, we need the subfloor. This also strikes me as a lot of work, but totally not rocket science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5) Shower and floor \u2013 tile. Here, we\u2019re back in contractor-land. I want marble walls, a little sitty-bench in the corner of the shower, 1\u2033 decorative tiles for the floor, a nice transition between the shower floor and the bathroom floor, and so on. While tile isn\u2019t rocket science \u2013 it seems to be one of those things where your first tile job will be a *lot* worse than your 10th. Also, it\u2019s wicked expensive to re-do. Once the floor is in, we can also re-install the toilet \u2013 which is a big thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, at this point I think that the bathroom becomes usable. We\u2019ll still have no walls \u2026 but the water delivery will work okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6) Walls. We\u2019re going to put insulation in the exterior wall and then hang drywall. Our friend with a mill-work shop in Maine has offered to make us custom Wainscoting \u2013 which we are *totally* going to do. Perhaps more important, he\u2019s offered to help us install it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7) Vanity \/ sink. With walls, we can install the sink \/ vanity. Also pretty straightforward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8) Ceiling. After the walls comes the ceiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What could be simpler? Time to get to work!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re in the end-run on the bathroom. We\u2019re going to have our bed moved to the house on Friday, and we currently have an entirely gutted bathroom with no other shower in the house. We have toilets and sinks downstairs, but we have no functional…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-bloggin","category-real-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1947,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946\/revisions\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}