Bathroom done… almost

Stuff I learned today during our ongoing reno:

• They actually sell the under-the-sink pipe elbow fittings all together for one price. Saves searching for the individual pieces. I like.
• I can’t cut very squarely with our hacksaw.
• ABS pipe doesn’t cut well with a jigsaw. Too much heat is generated by the blade, causing the pipe to melt back together as it cuts.
• ABS glue really smells.
• There hundreds of people in Ottawa with new BBQs from Lowes. Man, were they busy today.
• Our bathroom walls aren’t as square as I would like.
• Minor leaks are stubborn.

So, the bathroom is pretty much done. The vanity is screwed to the wall. The counter top is glued on with silicone. The pipes are all done and glued and don’t leak. The new faucets work. The new toilet seat is on. The new toilet roll holder is installed. New door knob is installed (Sandra wanted silver to replace the gold ones) All that’s missing is the baseboards, like everywhere else in the house where we’ve done stuff.

Sandra sanded and painted the entrance and bathroom door this morning. Unfortunately, the sanding wasn’t quite done well enough to hide most of the patches she did to the wall.  We didn’t bother doing a second coat. We’ll let it dry properly and take the hand sander to them tomorrow to see if we can get them down more so they’re more invisible.

Back to the minor leak. The faucet’s drain attachment seems to have a small leak where it meets the underside of the sink. It has a huge rubber washer that should prevent that, but it seems to leak no matter how tight I make it, and I’m paranoid of over tightening it and damaging the sink.

I removed it all and reassembled it again, and it seemed to stop at first, but then the plastic pipe with the drain plug lifter sprouted its own minor leak. I’m not sure even plumber’s tape will seal them, just because of the way they’re designed. It’s difficult to explain. I have a plan on how to stop the lifter pipe leak, but the other one still has me stumped.. unless I tried to tighten it even more.

A guy’s washroom

We grouted the entrance and bathroom on Thursday night and Sandra applied a few coats of grout sealer on Friday.

As well on Friday, we installed the vanity and dry fit the counter top – it looks pretty good. I decided to cut off the pipe elbows from the drain to make it easier to maneuver the vanity over the water supply pipes at the same time as fitting it over the drain pipe on the wall on the left. Because if that, we’ll have to pick up new pipe tomorrow to hook up the drain.

The toilet has now been reinstalled. Talk about paranoia. The first few flushes had us crossing our fingers. No leaks. At first I thought that maybe we’d only need the ½” flange extension but in the end I decided to also add the ¼” one as well to bring it to floor height. We also decided to throw out the toilet seat and get a new one. Until then, the toilet is for guys only. :)

So, tomorrow (err.. today, rather) I screw the vanity to the wall, permanently attach the “cultured granite” counter top to the vanity, and install the new faucet. Sandra is going to paint the bathroom door and I think get started on painting the kitchen and the entrance. That will pretty much finish what we have to do in the kitchen, entrance and bathroom, except for the baseboards which will come once the living room laminate floor is done.

That is next. Maybe even next weekend. We’ll see.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.