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Sunday, March 28, 2010

Home Reno – no more tiling

The tiling is DONE. Sorta. All that’s left to do is the grouting and sealing. It was so awkward trying to fit my fat ass into such a small room and install tiles, all the while trying to maintain the alignment and spacing. My knees and my back hate me.

Anyway, done. Grouting I can deal with tomorrow or the day after.

Next week we will attempt to install the new vanity, sink and faucets.

Week 33 - HMCS Sackville @ 100mm


HMCS Sackville
Originally uploaded by Twister65
I picked up a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens off Ebay this weekend. It took about 2 months of bidding on different auctions and losing on those bids either because I was outbid or the auction was canceled. It's crazy.

Somehow, I lucked out this time. I was the ONLY bidder on this auction, perhaps because the seller only had 1 feedback. He was local to my area, so I took a chance and won. The guy was even nice enough to meet with me downtown to save me $8 S&H.

This is one of the first shots I took with it, so it's really not the best. This is a collector plate of the HMCS Sackville, a WWII corvette, that I had the pleasure of spending a few days on to help to restore while I was in the Navy in the mid-80s. I think I bought this plate years later at the Stittsville Flea Market.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

I’m cuttin’ pipe… all night long…

Yeh, bad attempted at pipe pun. Sue me.

I took Friday off work again, this time to tackle the bathroom part of the reno. All we had done up to now was remove the old laminate and the toilet. Today it was to be gutted: vanity and sink removed, which involves cutting the copper pipes, and hacking the vanity all to hell.

It went surprisingly well, although we did run into a hurdle when I went to cut the pipes.

The pipe cutter that we bought wasn’t small enough to full rotate around the pipe to cut it because the pipes were too close to the back of the vanity. It looked like that red one in the picture, except ours was blue. My wife went to Canadian Tire to buy a smaller one, while I searched for our pipe wrench.

Cutting the pipes was a piece of cake, after shutting off the water main of course. :) We then began dismantling the vanity. It turned out that the left side of the vanity, attached to the wall, was actually the wall itself. Cheap. It took us about 10 minutes to remove all the pieces, leaving us with a floor lower than the rest of the floor. It’s a good thing we kept laminate floor scraps from last week. Laying then two-deep was enough to bring it up to the floor height.

IMG_2559 The funniest thing of the day had to be when I removed the toilet toll holder. It was old and inset into the wall and my wife wanted it gone.  I scored the edges and pried it off, leaving this massive chunk of plaster and carpet(?!) inside the wall. It took a lot of hammering to break it free. I'm not sure why they jammed carpet in behind it and also to the right of it. And, they stuffed plastic underneath it -- as insulation or to stop it from seeping down into the wall as it dried? Very odd.

With the vanity now gone, I attached the pressure-fit shutoff valves to the cut pipes. That went great. No leaks after turning the water back on. The main water shut off tap does seem to now have a very slow leak though.

My wife took some careful measurements of the floor space, taking into account the pipes and the toilet drain hole, and we managed to cover the entire floor with two large pieces of plywood. A couple of dozen floor screws later, and it was installed.

We dry fit some floor tiles and discovered the bathroom door isn’t going to close with tiles on the floor, so we’ll have to remove it and plane the bottom down. We were also quite happy to see that the layout of the tiles could not be better. The toilet drain occupies the space of a single tile, which will make the cutting really easy. As well, the sink water pipes also fit in part of a single tile space. Another easy cut. We planned this layout perfectly. :)

We also, finally, got to move our stove and fridge back into the kitchen. I didn’t mention that we grouted the tiles earlier in the week. It seems we had the presence of mind to buy quit-set grout, that dries in 3 hours.

My wife wants to paint the bathroom tomorrow before we begin laying the tile, so that’s the first thing on our list for tomorrow. We should also be able to install the floor tile. This time, I think we’re going to try and get the cut ones installed at the same time. Once the tile is laid, we really have no choice but to wait until Sunday to grout and install the vanity, if we’re lucky.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Confirm THIS!

This WTF Moment is brought to you by the Herongate Dental Clinic.

I have a dental appoint for tomorrow morning at 8:00am. Last week the phone rang and I answered it, which is rare for me as nobody ever calls me. It was an automated message from my dentist’s office reminding me that I have an appointment on Friday, March 26th at 8:00am and saying to “press 1 to confirm the appointment”.

I pressed 1 and hung up.

Yesterday I checked the messages on our answering machine. There was one from my dentist’s office, again reminding me that I have an appointment on Friday, March 26th at 8:00am, and adding that the appointment is not confirmed until I contact their office.

WTF?

I’m not going to call them. I’m going to go to my “press 1” confirmed appointment tomorrow morning for my check-up.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Home Reno – finishing the puzzle… well, mostly

We lucked out and the forecasted rain did not become a reality!

The entire day was spent cutting tile to fit near the walls… or around walls… and thresholds. We didn’t get started with cementing them down until some time after 3:00pm. We were so tired by then, that we almost decided to wait until another time. It’s hard to believe that it took that long. I never would have imagined it.

Anyway, we stuck it out and got it all done. The bathroom still has not been touched since we removed the laminate and the toilet. I’m sure that old vanity is going to take forever to remove because of the awkwardness of the plumping. So the floor in there still has to be done. It’s small, so it shouldn’t take long. (Famous last words)

After setting the last piece of tile at the entrance to the den, I was standing on it to make sure it was set and the damn thing snapped clean in half. I came so close to just leaving it. It didn’t look that bad. :) But I couldn’t. I cut a new one.

Our primary concern is still with getting the kitchen back to being functional, so we’ll be looking at grouting this week. Bathroom next weekend.

We’re both contemplating taking another Friday off as well.

Week 32 – Screwed


Screwed (32/52)
Originally uploaded by Twister65
This weeks photo is... 3700 flooring screws. :) All part of our main floor home reno. I should have shot it closer and might have gotten a cool texture image out of it.

Home Reno – pieces of the puzzle

The whole day was spent mixing mortar and laying tile.

We started off laying the tile without mortar to get a good idea of how they should be placed so that we didn’t end up with small pieces along any of the walls.

Thank god we bought the big mixer bit to attach to my drill. That stuff is thick and doesn’t mix easily. I thought it was going to burn out the drill, it got so hot. It said to mix for 5 minutes, let sit for 5-10 minutes, mix again and then use it. It took more than 5 minutes to fully mix so there was no powder at the bottom of the bucket.

IMG_2527Here’s a tip: make sure you have two buckets. Start to mix in the first bucket and then pour/scrape it into a second bucket so you can get all the unmixed powder at the bottom of the first bucket.

Everything I read said to lay all of the full tile pieces first, let them dry and then do the cut pieces later. It makes sense, but it can be a big pain to scrape the excess mortar from the non-tiled areas so they remain smooth for when you do put those tiles down.

Our living room looks like hell now. My wife joked that our house looks like it belongs on an episode of Hoarders. Funny, but so true.

We still haven’t done any more to the bathroom. There’s rain in the forecast for tomorrow, so I suspect it’s unlikely that we will be getting it done anytime soon. I guess we’ll continue with the tiling to get the kitchen back in order, and then we can work on removing the old bathroom vanity.