Update!

I woke up at the unheard of hour of 8:20 this morning...on my own! Now I know what it feels like to be an early riser!

And, since it's that perfect combination of sunny warmth with a slightly cool breeze and Dug is still sleeping and I'm off the hook breakfast-wise since it's Pancake Saturday and I already walked to Freddy's to buy some eggs and buttermilk for said pancakes and it's still before 10am...for all these reasons and more, I thought I would give you a little update.

I know. I could be finishing up painting the trim in the living room, or packing the last two boxes available before I have to go cardboard-recyling bin diving again, but no! I choose to sacrifice and write to all three of my faithful readers! Don't thank me or remind me how wonderful I am, (yes, that's a nod to you, Dad) there's no reason to. We can all just rest assured knowing that I am fully aware of how magnanimous I can truly be.

On to the update...

The bathroom: We have pretty much finished the plumbing that can be done within the bathroom. There is still a little bit to do with the drain pipes but that is work to be completed through the basement. The bathtub is fully functional with tub filler and shower. (Although to be technically accurate, the shower can't really be completed without the walls being up, which they aren't.) Today we will be attacking the last of the electrical work and putting in the under-floor heating grid. Leaving just the tile work and sheet-rocking before the finishing stuff. Yay! Progress!

The outside of the house: We were going to re-side the house, but then we realized we didn't have enough time. Instead we hired these two neighbor guys to repaint. They are almost done with the priming which means that I have to make a final decision on the colors! Ack!

The kitchen: Our kitchen is a nightmare. It is a conglomeration of 21st century appliances, 1923 cabinetry, 1950's countertops and modern super-cheap particle board cabinets and formed countertops. It contains bright yellow, taupe, white, black, stainless steel and cream. It is somewhat of a hallway kitchen and on the one side is all original cabinetry, complete with a super-narrow, super-short countertop that hits me right at the thigh. The other side has been updated with the cheapest stuff possible to make a super-long, perfect-height counter space. For someone who makes almost every meal that her family eats...it sucks!

The good news: We are having the kitchen redone. Yay! Everything will be uniform and lovely!
The bad news: It is being torn up the weekend before we leave and will not be finished until after we are gone. *sniff, sniff* Oh well. Enjoy it, renters!

Painting the inside: The renter guys told me that they want to repaint their rooms. Hooray! This means that I only have to make sure the trim in each room looks nice. This makes me very happy. Although I did realize that I should repaint the basement, too. At least the common areas. I always forget about it, since we don't live down there. So really I'm back to the same amount of painting again. *heavy sigh*

Packing: It's coming along. I've been out to the hospital twice to get boxes out of their multiple recyling bins. I need to go again. I've been packing stuff that isn't used right now and I've finished 27 boxes! Unfortunately, since it's stuff that's usually stored away, it doesn't look like I've done anything. *another heavy sigh*

That's it. Dug was going to have to travel this week but now he's only going to be gone the week before we move. Still sucky, but not so bad as being gone the two weeks before we move...

We're progressing, but it's a lot like going to college. During my student years, studying was never "finished." You could always study more. It would always be beneficial to understand the material even better. The need to study was always there like a giant flying raccoon that always hovered right behind you no matter where you went.

Moving is like that. Everytime you take a break, you can't really relax 'cause that dang raccoon is there. You can hear his breath and feel the slight breeze made by his wings. He's staring at you, telepathically telling you, "There's more to do." or "If you work now, you won't be so stressed come moving day." or "There's one word for you right now, 'unproductive.'" My only solace is knowing that on 20 September, Mr. Invisible-Non-Existant Flying Rodent will leave me alone and have to pester someone else.


PS I've found a super-cool game for getting your mind off things. It's a challenging, physics-based puzzle game. I know that doesn't sound like fun, but just try it before you judge it, ok? It's Magic Pen!

31 Easy Steps To Test Your New Bathtub For Leaks and Bathe Your Children at the Same Time

1. Adjust overflow/drain contraption to fit tub.
2. Attach above-mentioned thing-a-ma-jig to tub. (Keep in mind that the drain for the tub is only about six inches long, is not attached to anything and ends mid-air in the basement.)
   
3. Construct tub-filling gizmo from pvc pipe, tape, kitchen faucet and kitchenaid. (pic at left and below)
   
4. Fill tub with water to check for leaks. (Probably should have done this before we poured cement...)
   
5. After only a half-gallon, notice leak at drain/tub junction.
6. Jerry-rig temporary solution to drain tub using a corner pipe, a bucket and Tricia's biceps.

7. Drain water into bucket, fix leaky junction.
8. Clean up water mess.
   
9. Begin filling tub again, so far so good.
10. Wonder if water really needs to be above whirlpool jets before testing.
11. Test jets prematurely, confirm that yes, water must be above jets.
12. Clean up water mess.
13. Get kids in tub for "test run."
14. Kids happy, love the whirlpool. Comment "This is big enough to swim in!"
15. Realize that Water Level High Enough to Cover Jets + 4 Kids in Tub + Overflow Drain Pipe Not Attached to Anything and Ending in Mid-Air = Big Water Mess in Basement.
16. Tell kids to be perfectly still. (I know. Try not to laugh too hard.)
    
17. Dug opens drain, Tricia holds bucket under pipe in basement until full. Dug closes drain, Tricia dumps bucket into toilet. The plan is to drain the water low enough so that we can finish bathing the kids without the water sloshing into the overflow. (This level is actually hypothetical and doesn't exist, by the way.)

18. Inform children that if they really want to finish their bath they better not move another muscle.
19. Continue draining by bucket.
20. Threaten kids with bodily harm if they move a muscle again. (No, I still don't know why we didn't have them get out.)
    
21. Discover that if Dug opens the drain fully, the makeshift pipe system can't handle all the water and it overflows onto Tricia.
22. Dug finds that he "just can't help himself."
23. Tricia threatens Dug with bodily harm if he does it again.
24. Tub now drained low enough to finish bathing children if they "don't act crazy."

25. Discover that kids are incapable of non-crazy action in a body of water.
26. Clean up water mess.
    
27. Water sits in tub for a day and a half because Tricia can't/won't finish draining the tub via the bucket method.
28. Dug and Chris set up a temporary (read: unglued, shoved-together pipes) drain system.
29. Dug and Chris find that their system is insufficient for dealing with the massive amount of water that drains from a tub at once.
30. Clean up water mess.
31. Tub sufficiently tested, found without leak and in perfect-working order. Basement floors very clean.

Here's a "bonus" image for you. Sorry if you find it offensive. I just couldn't help myself. (Chris, what's the point of taking pictures, if you don't share them?)

We've got bathtub!

We've made progress on our bathroom again. We cut two holes in the floor. One for the toilet and one for the bathtub. They are lovely, which I just realized is kinda funny since technically a hole is a non-entity. But it doesn't matter because holes are progress. They are a step forward towards having a non-basement bathroom once again.

In the words of an As Seen On TV info-mercial, "But wait! There's more!"

We also put our super-sweet, six-foot whirlpool tub in place!

Now when people look through the kitchen wall into the unfinished bathroom space they'll see a bathtub and I won't have to say, "This our bathroom. We're re-doing it."

They will see it and say, "So, you guys are redoing your bathroom, eh?" And I'll just have to say, "Yes." Less explaining the same things over and over = happy Tricia. Although it doesn't explain why there isn't a wall between our bathroom and kitchen. Oh well, I just have to remind myself, Baby steps.

Our tub is in place but it didn't go exactly as planned. But then again, does it ever?

First, we had to get the bathtub into the bathroom from its temporary home in our basement. It was a straight shot, so that was good, but we bought the largest dang tub that would fit in our tiny bathroom. It had to be turned onto its side and took three of us to get it up our very steep-very shallow basement stairs. That coupled with the fact that as whirpool tub it is wrapped around with tubes that state explicitly "DO NOT LIFT FROM TUBES!" made the whole process that much more difficult. There are tubes all the way around it. Where they heck do they expect me to grab it from?

Moving it into the bathroom used all my muscle reserves, but now we had to position it. Dug is over six feet tall and not what you would call 'lanky'. He never took baths because our previous bathtub was so shallow and short that the water didn't even cover his thighs when he sat completely upright. Nor could he lay down without his legs completely sticking out of the water since the tub was roughly the equivalent length from his head to his bum. He had had enough of this height discrimination so he bought a six-foot, really deep bathtub. A six-foot bathtub to fit in a space six-foot and one-half inch long. Yep. We had one-half inch to spare.

Let me see if I can illustrate with words how things were situated. Our new bathtub was now sitting in our 6'1/2" x 9' bathroom perfectly diagonal. Dug on one side, Chris on one end, and me on the side opposite Dug. Our goal was to get the bathtub parallel with the end wall. The six-foot one-half inch one. We first tried to get it in place by lifting one tub end really high so we could turn it and then lower the end in place. Our whirlpool pump stuck out too far and caught against the wood. We could only get the end to lower down to within two feet of the floor before it got stuck. Uh oh. Did we buy a tub that was geometrically impossible to set in place? I was instantly reminded of the "grandfather clock" word problem from eighth grade.

"Can a nine-foot grandfather clock be placed in a nine-foot room?" (The answer is 'no' because in order to get it through the door you have to tip it on its side and
once on its side you can't tip it back up again. The hypotenuse (or diagonal from one corner to the other corner) will be longer than nine feet. The clock corners would hit before you could stand it on end.)

I asked Dug, "Is it physically possible for us to get this tub in place?"
Dug, aka Mr. Physics, would have already calculated this with his astute gray matter. I thought the question was rhetorical but he answered, "I hope so."

Hmmm...not the reassurance I was looking for. Needless to say I was having to control the anxious thoughts shooting like popping corn into my brain. "How long will it take to get a new one?" "How much money will we lose since this was a special order?" "Does this screw up our calculations on how the room would be plumbed/tiled/etc?"

Our only hope was that the other end of the bathtub, the end without the pump, would be sloped enough to allow us to drop it into place. We unstuck the pump-end, rotated the entire thing back into a diagonal, then lifted the drain-end up while turning the bathtub in parallel with the end wall again. Apart from a few fingers getting pinched between the tub and the studs, it was gently lowered into its correct orientation with no hassle. *huge, anxiety-ridding sigh of relief* Thank God!

Second phase:


A tub usually has runners built onto the bottom, which the tub sits on. Dug studied up on tub installation and found that if you set the tub in a pool of cement, the cement hardens in contact with the entire bottom of the tub, not just the runners, and shores up the entire bottom surface. A person's weight is thereby displaced over the entirety of the bottom of the bathtub.

We had decided to apply this method to our bathtub installation. We put a sheet of plastic on the floor and after mixing up a bag of quik-crete, dumped it into the middle of the plastic. After letting it thicken up a bit, we took a trowel and piled it onto itself, making a good-size mound.

Somehow between the three of us we lifted the bathtub up and onto the mound, nestling it up against the back wall and into its soft-cushy pillow of quik-crete with one-quarter inch to spare on each end. Unforeseen problem #2: The runners are too tall. Our plan was to have the entire bottom of the tub shored up by the concrete, right? Well, we didn't measure the runners...oops! Our particular bathtub has three-inch tall runners. That means that we would have needed a mound of cement three-inches tall if it was going to be able to even touch the underside of the tub. The runners sank into the mound only an inch or so.

So what is the downside to this? Well, luckily it is only expended time and money. Nothing is gained, but nothing is really lost either. It's just an extra step that we didn't need since there was no way we were going to lay a 3" bed of concrete for that tub! Oh well! Live and learn. At least that's what we hope we are doing...

For now, I've got a bathtub in place and I see progress. That's all I care about.

Next step...plumbing time!

A Slow Drain OR Decades of Gunk

Dug finally rerouted the kitchen drain. To give you an idea of what we were dealing with, I've provided illustrations.

The first is a diagram of how water drained from the kitchen sink to the sewer line. Notice the many-cornered path the waste water had to travel. This route + corroded pipes = eventual slowing of drain.

The second diagram illustrates the new route. Straight lines, few corners. Easy peasy.

Not only does the kitchen sink have happiness, but our downstairs (and right now, only) shower can drain by itself. The kitchen sink drain pipe used to run into the shower drain and often plugged it. Few things are grosser than taking a shower that stops draining and suddenly pieces of decomposing food start floating around your bare ankles. Nastiness.

But now it's all better. One more step to a completely happy house.

For your viewing enjoyment. Here is one last picture. This is a cross-section of a piece of pipe that Dug removed. Believe it or not, this is not the worst of them. (Sorry I didn't add anything in the picture for reference. That hole is just big enough to let a nickel fall through.) And we wondered why the sink and shower were always clogging...

You've got free labor, use it!

A great day has dawned. My children are now old enough to help. I mean it. Not "help" as in make things harder and get in my way, but really help. Our job yesterday was to remove all the nails from the bathroom studs. When the lathe and plaster was ripped out, we didn't take the time to pull the nails. We are now at the point where they need to be gone.

It started with Dug armed with a nail puller and I with a hammer. Of course, since Dug was in charge, I had to pull a nail, grab it , then fling it in the garbage can. A dropped nail was immediately located and dealt with. Left to my own devices I would have been pulling them like crazy, letting them fall where they may, but once again, Dug's method proved the most efficient.

Our oldest son wandered into the kitchen, saw what we were doing and wanted to help. We had an extra hammer, didn't want to bend over or squat, so we said, "Sure, you do the ones by the floor."

In walks oldest daughter. "I want to help, too." I told her that the best way to help was by loading the dishwasher. We didn't have another hammer and it was her brother's turn right now. She didn't like that. Of course she wouldn't. Nails are much funner than dishes. But I told her that after she did some dishes, it would be her turn. She loaded it up, asking, "Is that enough?" after ever dish. I told her she had to load it all.

When she was done, her and her brother switched places and she pulled nails while brother washed the non-fitting dishes by hand. It all worked very well and I was very proud of myself for orchestrating it.

In the end we pulled over 446 nails! Not sure how many over because I got the idea to count them after I had already started. Now, if we had done it my way it would have been a lot more cleaning up to do, but it would have been a great picture, right?! Probably close to 500 nails scattered on the floor. That would have been cool. Oh well.

Home Renovation, cont'd.

We've been working. Slowly but surely it's coming around. We're about to move into the "noticable improvements" phase of our bathroom reconstruction. Up until now everything we've done has been hidden. Our kitchen wall is still down, no new plumbing is showing, the floor isn't even fully in, nothing that someone off the street would walk in and say, "Gee, you've been busy haven't you?" But we have been busy!
This picture has some whacked-out exposure levels, but I needed to tweak it so you could see the pipe we were dealing with. Amazingly enough, it is the only picture we have of that black thing. See it there at the back wall running most of length of the photo from top to bottom? And of course it has a 2x4 partially obscuring it. That black monstrosity (you really can't appreciate its size and girth with this photo) was a cast iron pipe that we needed to remove. I don't know the proper terminology but it's the "breather" pipe for our plumbing. The joints where one pipe is fitted to another were over 6.5" wide! The pipe itself was only 4" but it had huge joints. Left in place, the tub we ordered wouldn't fit.

Dug did some 'net research and found the tool needed for the job. A soil pipe breaker. Sounds menacing, doesn't it? It's actually the simple ratchet tool that Dug is holding in the picture. (Once again, sorry about the photo. Dug had ten minutes to get it back to the rental shop and I only had one shot. Hey, at least it is in focus!) Simple doesn't mean light, though. That baby was sooo heavy and guess who got the job of holding it? You guessed it, me! Dug had to thread it around the pipe, attach it, flip some levers and tighten it up before it could stay in place. I had to hold it level so it wouldn't bind. My arms were bent with my hands at my shoulders in the most stable, least energy-used position I could muster. Did I mention it was heavy? The cool thing was that, once in place, it only took about two pumps on the handle when we heard this loud crack. Dug stopped pumping and I went in for a closer look. Sure enough, there was a nice clean crack all the way around. I think the chain breaker was in use for all of ten minutes. It cost us about one dollar/minute and it was the best money we've spent so far. Our other options were using two sawzall blades to cut through the pipe, taking roughly fifteen minutes OR bashing the thing to pieces with a sledge hammer and spending about an hour cleaning up the mess, hoping nothing too big fell into the sewer pipes. (I must admit, the sledgehammer option sounded the most fun, but not the cleaning part.) As most renovation takes longer and is harder than you think it will be, it was nice to be surprised in the other direction.

If you need to get a cast iron pipe out of your way, get yourself a pipe breaker. You'll be glad you did.

A wee bit of progress..

We've been working on the bathroom every day that Dug is on vacation and we are seeing progress. We are in the building-back-up stage. Finally! The main reason we gutted our bathroom in the first place was because we had some water issues. The bathtub/shower had been put together poorly and it was leaking into our basement. Not good. The linoleum had some discoloration from water damage, the floor plan was less than stellar and our toilet had seen much brighter days. Oh, and we were using an adjustable wrench to turn the hot water on and off and the shower drain was slower than molasses in a blizzard.

side story-
When you think about things that can be devastated by children, one's first thought does not go to the toilet. But, alas, toilets are not impervious to my young ones. The porcelain throne's first injury was dealt by my oldest daughter. The tank lid didn't sit fully on the tank because the toilet was built in too close to the wall. (One example of the faulty floor plan.) The back side of the lid sat on the tank edge. Daughter #1 leaned on it in a funny way and it fell off. I think she was 3 or 4 at the time. It broke in two pieces. Dug fixed it with epoxy, but didn't realize the tube was for gray and not white. So our poor, white toilet had a jagged gray scar on its tank lid. Injury part deux occurred when Daughter #2 dropped a large glass candle holder into the poor toilet. It knocked out a hole about the size of my index finger in the bottom of the bowl, which proceeded to empty its contents onto the floor. The "upside" was that it had been recently flushed. I was so grateful. Odds like that don't come my way every day. So prior to the gutting, the john had two scars: a toilet's equivalent of a knife slash and gunshot wound. Poor thing. He never saw it coming.)
-end of side story

back to main story:

For defining purposes, when I say gutted, I mean gutted. The only things left standing are the studs and floor. The linoleum and sub-floor had been removed so we are standing on the actual floor boards, which, if removed, would leave a gaping hole into the basement. So, what do we do? Why remove them, of course. Not all, just a few. Some of the floor boards and part of the framing boards had rotted from the leak. With the kitchen wall gone, we had a hole from the kitchen through the bathroom, down into the basement. The picture of my kids peering down from the kitchen counter was taken by me while I was standing in the basement, looking up through the bathroom floor. Or, more correctly, where the bathroom floor formerly was located. They think this whole renovation thing is pretty fun.

Side note: My youngest son, who is three, does not remember there ever being a bathroom there. He wasn't yet two when we destroyed it. In his mind, having a gutted, non-working room in your house is completely normal. Wierd, huh?

Today we fixed the floor. It was so cool. It was progress. We took what was once a hole and made it whole again. (I just reread that, and that's just funny.) What accomplishment. Even though it was small in the grand scope of the entire project, it was still movement forward. And I'm all for forward momentum...

Here are a couple pictures of the beautiful fresh wood stuffs. The first one is from inside the bathroom. We put the new piece of floor in and replaced the missing framing 2x4 along the base of the wall.


This second one is from the basement looking up. You can see where we had to put in 2x4 pieces to attach and shore up the replacement piece.


That's all for now...I'll keep you posted.

Vacation time is over!

We officially ended our Christmas vacation today. If yesterday was a do-nothing day, today had to be a do-something day. And what did we do? Why work on our bathroom, of course.

A refresher: Our bathroom is gutted. We need to fix it. Refresher ended.

As Dug was looking at the bathroom wall that the sink plumbing had to go through, he realized that the built-in spice rack shelf thing in our kitchen had to go. (See picture above.) The shelves were literally up against the bathroom wall, effectively closing off the between-stud area.

Unfortunately, our walls are lathe and plaster. Not too conducive to specific area removal. The lathe (little wooden boards running parallel to the floor and ceiling) are the "ribs" of the wall. The wet plaster is smeared all over it, making sure it gooshes through the gaps in the lathe so that when it dries, it's holding on tight. It's a sturdy wall and has a great texture, but that's where the pleasantries end. If you try to break off a piece of plaster, it breaks in highly irregular pieces. If you pull a piece of lathe free, it removes the support for the plaster and it can just fall off the wall. Any sort of trauma, even hammering nails, can cause the plaster to let go of the lathe and become unstable. So if we wanted to just remove this one piece of the wall, the violence of the act effectively destabilizes the entire wall. Huge cracks appear. It's not a pretty sight. So what could we do?

More demolition! I, for one, love demolition. It has always been a dream of mine to go to Pleasure Island with Pinnocchio and destroy stuff with all the bad boys. I think it would be worth it, even if I was turned into a donkey. Dug, on the other hand, hates demolition. It's messy and it is destructive. He prefers cleanliness and building. What is that they say? Opposites attract? In the words of Bethany, "Fo Sho!"

So to build the bathroom, we needed to tear some more stuff down. But with Dug around, it has to be in an orderly fashion. Which is probably best. If I was left to my own devices, we'd probably have the authorities knocking on our door, condemning the place. With Dug at the helm, not only would the entire process be systematic and organized, but at the end of the day, we wouldn't have much mess to clean up either. He's a clean-as-you-go kind of boy.

(He's right, you know. It is easier to clean as you go. You just do a little at a time. Where with me, the end is a huge disaster that takes forever to clean. So props to the big guy, I was able to make dinner about thirty minutes after we finished. But my way is soooo much more fun!)

Before:After:
The picture has those jagged edges because it is a blending of nine photos! I wanted to get the entire area but I couldn't get back far enough. Isn't Photoshop cool?! Notice how much more you can see compared to the "before" photograph.
So that's what we did today. Sounds a little counter-productive, but you've got to do what you've got to do. I think it's a bit of wisdom we can all take to heart: Sometimes to fix your bathroom, you've got to knock down 1/2 your kitchen wall.

Decision, decisions...

We're finally starting the process of restoring our house to two working bathrooms! We have all the tile and Dug has finalized the plans. This is so exciting.

We gutted our bathroom in May 2006. So for the last 18 months we have had to use our bathroom in the basement. Seven people (3 adults, 4 children) having to use one bathroom. Not only is it a pain in the derriere (pun intended) to go to a different story to use the facilities, but the stairs into the basement are very narrow and very steep. We affectionately call them our "death stairs." The only upside is that our basement toilet is in a different room than the shower, thus affording others a chance to "relieve" themselves while someone is showering. That, I emphasize, is the only upside.

My brother, God bless him, works for a flooring store. They let him "dispose" of the extra pieces from finished jobs. We now have enough tile to finish our kitchen floor, our upstairs bathroom, our downstairs bathroom and the downstairs shower. The catch? Well, they aren't all the same color. But, it's not all bad. Almost all the 12" tiles are neutral tones like those above. I think a smattering of mismatched tiles within the neutral color family will actually go with the house since it was built in the Arts & Crafts style.

So here's what we've decided on: the natural tile for the floor and partway up the wall, white toilet, sink and tub, and something close to the light blue above for the upper walls. What do you think? That's it for now. I'll keep you posted on the progress. This last picture is our bathroom in its current state. It's like looking back in time. Those boards were last gazed upon in 1923. Pretty cool, huh?