It's getting to be dangerously close to 2 full years since I committed to the bathroom shower project. I think it was August 2010 to be honest.
At least in those 2 years we've replaced the counter tops, sinks, toilets, and floors in both bathrooms, as well as the many other projects that have been detailed on here. Some them that come to mind are the: kitchen floor and kickplates, built a 9" floor cabinet, the kitchen counter tops and cabinet doors (*each with custom sizing), kitchen sink, tile, grout and seal the kitchen backsplash. The living room ceiling fan (build and paint external mount box plus wiring) several light fixtures, all sink fixtures, all the light switch plates, remove kitchen garburator and add an additional outlet, install drinking water filter.. That's not even including all the cabin projects: carpet upstairs in the loft, front stairs, deck, and railing. Oh yeah, wrote and defended a PhD, had a baby. Plus all the fun trips and recreation we get up to. It's mind boggling really.
August 2010 Starting Demotion
Anyways, here shows the first sloped mortar bed that was finally completed today
Now I'm ready to re-install the curb, the PVC membrane, and the wall board. Then it's time to do another mortar bed on top of the membrane, seal the wall board, and then finally tile. Oh yeah, after I install the curb I'll have to cover it in lath as it will be covered with a layer of mortar as well before tiling.
There was already so much work just to get to here Such as:
Re do the plumbing underneath the floor
Install a "ledger strip" around the basin perimeter to set your slope to the drain
Install under-layer, expanded metal "lath" and use wood filler on all raised nails and screw heads
Have the plumber come in to install plumbing for a new center single-lever fixture, (he also plumbed the water filter)
Before we had the old-school separate knobs for hot/cold and our faucet was too low. Now it's nice and high.
Now what follows is perhaps a detailed excuse on why all this crap takes so long. With renovations, the devil is in the details. Here are just a few of the "gotcha's" that have added considerable time from the most recent projects. (This is maybe boring as hell. If so, I'm sorry, this is as much for my own recollection in the future as well. Please don't read if you don't want to. I'm anti social-media so I want to put the effort into documenting this type of stuff.)
Gotcha's in the water filter project
You'd think doing a simple mounting plate for the water filter would be easy. Yeah cutting the board took 2 minutes but finding the studs to screw it to was great fun. Turns out that since that wall is also an exterior wall to the hallway stairs, there are staggered studs, i.e, the wall is thicker than a 2x4 so the stud finder wouldn't work as every 2nd stud is not flush behind the interior drywall. After finally figuring it out, the pattern from the exposed wall in the bathroom (on the same wall) it was a piece of cake. It probably added about 2 hours of frustration though. It takes a lot of torque to open/close the water filter housing so the mounting plate had to be secure, i.e. several screws into studs.
Gotcha's in the "Shelves of Opportunity Project"
Bottom Shelf
Notice that the shelf and water tank pipes go "through" each other.
Well the shelf still had to be strong, this detail shows how I "bridged the gaps" with some hose clamps.
Shelf brackets
You can see the shelf brackets are "deeper" than the shelf itself.
A detailed view of the bracket shows the solution, another 1/2 hour on the table saw. Oh yeah, and on the right hand wall, there are no studs at the right front brackets, so those are wall anchors. More joy.
Gotcha's for the shower ceiling
How do you cut the studs flush to the drywall for the pony wall that I ripped out of the old shower? Well you do the best you can with a skill saw, then a dremel, then a hammer/chisel and a few hours of your time.
And finally flush drywall on the ceiling. I'm going to tile the ceiling and bring it out past where the old wall was by about an inch to hide this as I don't think a big drywall repair with tons of putty is a good idea in such a humid environment/location. I also don't want to rip the ceiling out and replace it with concrete board even though this is what I probably should do. I think tiles over thin-set over drywall should be fine for the ceiling.
The hell of all of this is that in this apartment there is no hose for cleanup, or good place to cut. So each time the saw(s) need to be used, that means first waiting for a sunny day, then getting them out from under tarps on the deck, fully dismantling the upstairs storage locker to break out the power tools and cords, not to mention all the cleanup at the end since you're now living with tools in the living room. Another factor is that this shower has essentially been another storage locker for years, so the first step is emptying in out into the family room.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger though. Kristy and I have learned to live in clutter but I really do think it has taken a toll on us. These photos kind of show why we rarely have people over to our place, it's always in some state of renovation-chaos, and the clutter can get really bad when it combines with a bunch of snowboarding / mountain biking / kickboxing / surfing gear laying out to dry.
More updates to come....I'm really motivated right now. I think I might just get a job soon so I have to get this house finished, or at least the projects bigger than 1 weekend.
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