Builders Share

What Next

After several days of entertaining guests it was time for us to go on our own little vacation.  I can't remember the last time we spent a full week away from the house, and I never thought a motel-efficiency could be so relaxing.  The break was well-deserved.  Amazingly, though, all the tasks that I left behind were waiting for me when I returned.

Much of the summer was spent getting some essential jobs done so that we could provide a comfortable stop for traveling friends.  Now that those essentials are in place (2 functioning baths and guest rooms) I need to decide on the next step in the project.  Which road do I take.

The upstairs bathroom, though functioning, still needs wainscoting installed in one corner and the door needs to be trimmed-out as well.  There are several electrical tasks that need completing (vanity light and radiant floor mat) and the bathtub needs to get painted and installed.  It would be nice to finish that job before getting started on something else.  Throughout the project I've completed a lot of jobs to the point of "good enough for now" as the demands of daily life dictate what comes next.  A few more days on the upstairs bath and I'd be able to call it done.

But another large job has been nagging me for a while.  The sill under the front door is rotted and needs to be repaired.  This job will require removing some of the cement asbestos shingles that were added as siding to the house sometime in the '50s.  Once I've done that I'll no doubt discover a whole lot work that needs to be done to the sills and siding underneath.

Another exterior job that needs getting to is putting new shingles on the ell where the asbestos siding was removed to install a new window.  This part of the house has been an eyesore so long that I've almost forgotten that it hurts.

The two exterior jobs require decent weather, and the months of September and October are nearly perfect for doing work around here. If I spend too long mucking about with the upstairs bath, that window of good weather will be closed.

And then there's the ceiling in the living room with its lovely exposed plumbing, and the kitchen counters of 3/4 inch plywood that contain a 2 year history of crumbs embedded in the rough surface, the window casings and baseboards downstairs.  There is much to do between now and the next vacation...

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Revisit to Hot Water

Not too long ago I replaced one of the elements in the hot water heater (see: Hot Water Detour), and not long after that I installed a timer for the hot water heater so that we weren't spending electricity heating hot water when no one was around to use it (see: Time for Hot Water). 

Well, ever since I did those jobs, the hot water seemed to be getting hotter and hotter to the point where it was scalding and difficult to regulate.  So just as the guests were arriving I thought I should go downstairs and see if I could adjust the thermostat.  I didn't want anyone scalding themselves in the shower of course, and what better time to remedy the problem than 5 minutes before they were due to arrive.

Adjusting the thermostat on the hot water heater is a 5 minute task, but that's when the thermostat is working.  When it's not working, the job takes on more of a life as you have to figure out that the problem is just that, a broken thermostat.

The upper and lower thermostats on a hot water tank are different units but they're designed to work together so that both of the elements are heating water if either of them registers a temperature below what's been set. In my case it was the lower thermostat that stopped working.

I decided to disconnect the lower thermostat and element and just run the tank on the upper element while my guests were visiting and until I could get a replacement.  This worked okay for most of the weekend as the tank was full of very hot water at the start, but after two days, the water was getting used up and the single element wasn't enough to keep up with the demand.  Unfortunately there were some tepid showers the last day of their stay.

Once the house was cleared out of guests and I had a chance to get to the supply store I was able to return to the cellar and install the new thermostat.  Now our vintage hot water heater is back to regulating the water temperature somewhere around 120 degrees.

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2 Out of 3 Ain't Bad

There's always some trepidation surrounding the installation of a toilet.  The thought of the fixture not setting properly in the wax ring and the risk of a black water leak in the house makes the task a bit stressful beyond its complexity.

Getting all the pieces to line up is the hardest part.  The flange must be set so that the bolts can be positioned in alignment with the toilet's bolt holes.  Most flanges are designed to allow you to install the flange first and then add the bolts later by inserting them in a slot that has wide and narrow sections.  You insert the bolt in the wide section which receives the bolt cap and then slide the bolt to the narrow section where the bolt can be held in place.  Positioning the flange so that the narrow end of the slots align with the toilet's bolt holes is a crucial first step.

The next piece is placing the wax ring on the bowl.  It helps to press it well into place so that it doesn't fall off when you turn the bowl over or slip out of place as you position the bowl over the flange.

When you're ready to set the bowl on the flange, it helps to have an extra set of eyes to guide your alignment of the bolts into the bolt holes.  And once the bowl is positioned correctly you need to wiggle and press it down to compress the wax ring and assure a tight fit.  And of course, when tightening the bolts you have to be careful not to over-tighten and crack your new toilet.

I was able to follow most of my own advice for installing the toilet, and got it hooked up and running in time for our guests.  The supply line had been prepped back around New Years when my brother helped do a temporary installation for house guests then, so hooking up the water was just a matter of tightening the compression nut.

The sink on the other hand required breaking out the propane torch and solder to sweat the new valves.  It also meant gluing some PVC adapters to complete the drain hookup.

I purchased the bathroom sink over a year ago when I spotted it at a salvage store.  I was told it came out of the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston during a renovation there.  The only problem is that it was a pedestal sink without a pedestal.  As the day got closer for installation, I was still wracking my brain as to how I was going to mount the sink, and even considered giving up on it altogether.  And then I got the idea of mounting it on a cabinet and remembered an old sewing machine cabinet stored in the barn.  (We had used it in the past to hide a small TV and VCR--a kind of mini entertainment center.) The sink fit nicely.  I just had to cut a larger hole in the top and a couple of holes in the back for the plumbing, then I clear-coated the finish with 3 coats of urethane, and now the old sewing cabinet is living its third life as a sink vanity.

With the toilet and sink installed upstairs, we were ready for our guests.  The bathroom still has a way to go.  There's more wainscoting to install, the wiring for the radiant heat still needs to get done, and the third fixture, the bathtub, needs to be painted and installed, but we've come a long way in the short time since I started prepping the floor for tiles.

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Beat the Clock

With the tile down and the grout sealed, I was ready to start installing the wainscoting.  Remember, guests are due and I want to get the upstairs sink and toilet installed so that there are two facilities in the house.  I don't want to install these fixtures temporarily for the sake of our friends' visit.  I want to use their arrival as an incentive to get this job done.

The wainscoting had to go in before I could install the fixtures, and before I installed the wainscoting, I had trim out the windows and door. 

In trimming the window I decided to make the "stop" the full width of the jamb.  This served to cover the jamb, which was in pretty rough shape, and its extension which I had added some time back to make up the difference in the thicker wall.  (See: Window Jamb Extensions - March 1)  The problem with this approach is that if/when I have to remove the window sash, I'll have to pull out a large piece of the trim which won't be as easy as removing a narrow window stop.  But overall, with the gnarly jambs encased, the trimmed window will look a lot neater.

Doing this kind of finish work ranks with the more satisfying tasks in the renovation project.  It's a nice mix of thought and handiwork that goes into getting a pleasing result.  One of the drawbacks of my current situation is that the power saws are out in the driveway.  That means having to be extra careful with my measurements unless I want to be making several long trips for a single cut.

With the windows trimmed, I was ready to get started on the wainscoting. I decided to concentrate on finishing the walls behind the toilet and sink first, then if I had time, I would continue with trimming out the door and adding wainscoting to the remaining walls.

The challenge with the wainscoting was deciding how to mount it.  On the exterior walls there is 1x3 strapping behind the plasterboard but not all in convenient places for mounting the wainscot boards.  The wall studs are over 2 inches deep from the surface of the wall because of the sandwich of plasterboard, strapping, and rigid insulation, so reaching those as anchors was out of the question.  The recommended method is using construction adhesive, but I wasn't sure how that would bond with the veneer plaster.  (Back when I was plastering, if I had known I was going to use wainscoting I probably wouldn't have plastered that section of the wall.)  I decided to go with a combination of construction adhesive and nails in the spots where I was certain there was strapping behind the plasterboard.

After the wainscoting was up I was ready to cap it with some bull-nosing and coping trim and then install the baseboard.  Next up, the toilet and sink go in.

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Closet Desires

In between tiling and grouting, I finally got around to straightening out the closet in the master bedroom.

Chez Melendy, like most vintage houses was not designed with closets.  For some reason back then, your average homeowner didn't understand the need to own 20 pairs of shoes and have a place to store them along with those boxes of slides of your aunt Agnes' trip to Yellowstone in 1948.  Where nowadays culture has progressed to the point where we can stuff our attics, garages, and off-site storage units with enough unused items to choke a planet, in the days when Chez Melendy was built, people were foolish enough to consider an armoire sufficient for storing their wardrobes.

When trying to decide how to organize the small closet I was able to squeeze into the master bedroom plan, we consulted many storage sites and magazines.  Unfortunately almost all the closet systems were too large and unwieldy for our funky little space.

After all the ogling at glossy photos and measuring this way and that in hopes of achieving the closet of our dreams, I ended up down at the hardware store buying two lengths of wooden dowels and three sets of wall brackets for mounting them.

Anyone who's ever hung a clothes rod knows that this seemingly simple project rarely goes without a hitch.  I was doing fine until I tried to mount a bracket on the one upstairs wall that still had old plaster lathe behind the plasterboard.  The toggle bolt I was using couldn't go in far enough to spring open and get a hold.  Well I had already drilled a hole large enough for the toggle bolt but now too large for a standard solid wall anchor.  The answer came in a special solid wall anchor that was deeply threaded like a large wood screw.  This anchor was able to grab onto the plasterboard as it was screwed into the large hole.  I was then able to use a smaller wood screw to anchor the wall bracket to that.

Our little closet is unlikely to garner a mention in "Closet Beautiful" but we're happy with the way it  came out and expect it will hold our wardrobes just fine and also act a reminder not accumulate too much baggage.

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Still on My Knees

The old patellas are holding out okay though I did feel an old twinge the other night while trying to clean the white haze of leftover grout from the new tiles.  I've been saved by an old pair of gardening knee pads but any thoughts of a career change to a tiler ends at the knee joint.

After letting the thinset cure for 48 hours, I was ready to grout the tiles.  I considered trying to tint the grout a little with some of paint that we're going to use on the walls but decided to play it straight and use unadulterated white.  I'm glad because the white grout is looking fine.

I'm also happy that my concerns about raised tiles in the previous post were largely for naught. You have to look pretty hard to see the imperfections.

The grouting has gone well except that I underestimated the amount I needed and had to stop halfway.  The box of grout provided instructions for estimating (14.5sqft per lb. for 4-1/2" tiles with 1/16" joints) but my math and translation calculations tend to come out in favor of saving me money, that is until I have to take another trip to the building supply with a stop at the filling station.

A couple things I learned along the way...

Non-sanded grout is for tiles with joints less than 1/8".  The folks at the hardware store didn't have an answer to my question of the difference between sanded and non-sanded.  As it turns out it says so right on the package but when the 6 year-old is bugging you to buy gumballs or the ridiculous screwdriver with the gooseneck light attachment, it's a little hard to read the fine print.

Use white thinset if you're going to grout with a white or a light color.  My gray thinset shows through the white grout in a couple of places but not so you'd notice without looking close.  If I hadn't been diligent about cleaning out the joints while the thinset was still wet, the dark color would have been a bigger problem.

As mentioned earlier, don't rush into the work with runny thinset.  When mixing the stuff, make sure it's stiff enough to support the weight of the tile, this will allow you to make adjustments to the tile height as needed.

If you're tiling over a radiant heating mat, use a floor leveler to cover the mat and create a smooth surface to start on.  There is just enough thickness to the heating wires to make it difficult to build up enough thinset to compensate.  This extra step, expense, and time, will save a lot of frustration when you start laying the tiles, and probably make for a more successful job all around

Once the grouting is done, I'll still have to seal it before I can get on with the next big step towards finishing the bathroom: installing window and door casings and bead board wainscoting.

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