TERRIBLE DECISIONS: OH SHIT THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING

On January 1, 2014January 1, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Stage one: tub successfully taped off, a chore that I proved entirely incompetent at doing. All nice and pretty.

Stage Two: I knew there were some wires back here, and exposed the junction box when I demolished the wall on the left. “Huh,” I said. “The fuck’s that doing there?” I had thought it was two different wires going to two different places, but no– a live wire runs down to the junction box, then swings back up dead and loops around through the drywall (and through what used to be the bulkhead) only to dangle uselessly behind the wall. There apparently used to be a power switch on the wall behind the bathtub (which is our entryway) but they removed it when they wallpapered. Still not sure where the other (live) wire heads off to.

Finding what you think is a live wire behind a wall while you’re hammering away is fun, by the way. Nice moment or two of soul-shattering OH SHIT I’M GONNA DIE terror. It’s like cardio!

Not much left but details at this point– cleaning up around nails and pulling the back and right parts of the old bulkhead, which are above the top of this picture, but I need to be on a stepladder to do that and I need to clean out the tub before I get on the stepladder. Taking a break for lunch and to clear drywall dust out of my lungs before I clean everything up.

(Random note: my iPad fits perfectly inside a gallon-size ziplock bag, which lets me listen to music without getting shit all over my iPad. Whee!)

So… yeah. I suppose we actually have to rebuild this now.

Terrible Decisions: in which other people do all the work

On December 28, 2013December 29, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I can’t take credit for this one.

Stage Two involved installing the new shower fan (I really should decide/find out what these things are called; I call it something different every time I refer to it) in the new ceiling above where the bulkhead used to be. While the actual work involved didn’t frighten me all that much, the location of the work did: in my unfinished attic, balancing precariously on rafters and trusses and other things that mean “balance beams.” I am a fat man, kids. I know intellectually that I’m not so substantial that I am likely to come crashing down through the roof so long as I’m not dumb enough to put my foot down in the wrong place, but I have never had terribly good balance and the simple fact is I’m probably going to put my foot down in the wrong place at some point.

(Fun fact: I’m not afraid of heights. Or, at least, I’m not at all afraid to be high off the ground– just so long as my feet are planted firmly. I don’t like being balanced precariously precisely because of my not-great balance issues; I’d be perfectly happy up on the observation deck of the Sears Tower, but if you ask me to climb an eight-foot ladder, especially if you want me at the actual top of the damn thing, I’m gonna side-eye the hell out of you before deciding if my sense of masculinity insists that I actually do it. It depends on the ladder, too; I’ll climb twenty feet on a ladder that feels solid before I climb six feet on a dodgy one. And while I’ve never actually done it, I’m pretty sure I’d be perfectly happy to skydive given the chance.)

Anyway, the solution was to call in my father-in-law, who worked as a general contractor and is much more comfortable with this sort of thing. And it’s turned out to be an annoying job, too– the construction of the thing mandated that it had to be installed from below, which I wasn’t counting on and which required some fancy drywall cutting to make sure we could actually slide it up through the preexisting ceiling without tearing it down. Then there was a random extraneous board in the way which had to be cut out (not a big deal) and a damn thermostat wire in pretty much exactly the wrong goddamn place, which he worked around. Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time on a stepstool in the tub giving my shoulder muscles a workout by holding the damn thing up above my head in proper positioning while he (I swear, on purpose) took as long as he possibly could to mark holes, predrill, and then finally screw the fan into place.

Which, as it turned out, was as far as the work got, because guess what else we have in our attic? Aluminum wiring. Which has a nasty habit of causing fires when spliced or pigtailed with copper wire. Which is sort of a problem, especially since this is going to be in an attic full of blown-in insulation, which is allllllll sorts of fire-hazardy. (Minor pride moment: I noticed this first; all those hours of watching Mike Holmes shows finally paid off!) Anyway, this isn’t an insurmountable issue, it just means that we have to get special connectors to join the wires together and we didn’t happen to have any on hand. So the remainder of the hookup is happening today while I’m at work; theoretically by the time I get home tonight we’ll have a functioning shower fan again.

Just in time for me to wreck the shower surround… tomorrow? Monday? We’ll see.

Whee!

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: NOT DEAD YET

On December 26, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Alllllrightythen. Phase one: DESTROY BULKHEAD is complete. That last board back there is being left in place on account of there are nails going both ways and I suspect pulling it is going to destroy the drywall, so we’re going to leave it until we actually need to destroy the drywall. The broken piece of DW on the right there is coming down on that same day. Either today (probably not) or tomorrow my father-in-law is coming over; the new bathroom fan is getting installed right about where that pipe for the old one is coming down. That’s attic work and electrical work; I can destroy by myself– I need help for that part. After that’s done, we start taking out the walls.

Total elapsed time: Two hours, maybe, start to finish, and it’s even all clean already, except for that little bit in the back corner yet that I haven’t pulled down. Bathing the boy tonight shouldn’t be a problem.

Injury report: Minor scrape to knuckles, incurred after all work was done and while bagging up the trash. I didn’t feel a damn thing; turns out broken tile is razor-sharp and maybe you keep the work gloves on even when you’re not technically doing what you think of as work anymore.

Trepidation report: incredibly high; this was the second thing in a row that was Way Too Goddamn Easy. There’s gonna be a tarrasque living in the walls, I just know it.

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: PHASE ONE IN PROGRESS

On December 26, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy4 Comments

HELL^FUCKYEAH

Yeah, that’s right. HELL to the power of FUCK YEAH.

Haven’t even electrocuted myself yet.

Gimme an hour.

In which that was unexpected (Terrible Decisions, part XIV)

On December 22, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

This is Mr. Bulkhead:

Mr. Bulkhead lives in my bathroom, above my tub. He holds my shower fan and is covered with tile on his lower side. Until this evening, I thought he was full of blown-in insulation from the attic. Then I dremeled my way into him to see what I was in for when I demolished him later this week.

I was a bit startled with what I found.

If you were to poke your face directly into the hole up there, this is what you would see– a perfectly clean and dry space (any dust you see is from cutting through the drywall– not so much as a spiderweb despite the hole back there,) seriously over studded on the bottom (I assume to carry the weight of the tile?) and featuring unexpected and currently (that’s a pun) inexplicable electrical wires. I think that the one on the left runs to a power switch in the hallway– or maybe to the power switch in the bathroom itself, if it turns toward the camera and goes through a bunch of studs along the way. The other one is a bit of a mystery, because it’s not coming from the attic like all the other power lines in the house– I’m guessing there’s a junction box buried in the wall somewhere(*). Best guess is that it feeds a power outlet in the entryway to the house, although it seems like it’s in a weird place for that. Note the drywall along the back wall; that drywall has the bathtub surround tile on it once it gets south of the box.

Here’s the fan:

I cannot believe that that rinkydink summamabitch has been keeping my bathroom dry all these years; that tape should have dissolved somewhere in the eighties. The new fan is considerably larger and more powerful; we got the best one we had available to us.

Hooking it up is gonna be interesting. I had the idea that we’d be pushing away a bunch of insulation around it, moving the ceiling up, and tying it into the existing vent pipe however that might be done; the nice clean box we have is now calling that plan into question– like, maybe we keep the damn thing now that we know what it looks like? I dunno. We’d still have to redrywall at least the “floor” of the thing since the ceiling tile still has to come down. That electrical line in the back has me concerned, too; to keep that in the wall we’d have to notch out the studs back there or something. Doable, obviously, but I wasn’t planning on moving electrical lines even if it’s easy.

On the plus side, the wallpaper removal has been the easiest thing in the world. I’m honestly not sure right now if this new discovery has made this job more or less of a pain in the ass. As always, I’ll keep y’all updated. Especially if I hurt myself.

Suggestions and advice are welcome, obviously.

(* It’s my understanding that you’re not supposed to do that? Although maybe that wasn’t code when the house was built? I dunno; right now I don’t even know what it’s back there for, so speculating about whether the possibly-nonexistent junction box is up to code or not seems kinda pointless.)

It’s gonna be one of those days…

On December 21, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

An I Hate Technology day, to be specific, because I’ve been at OtherJob trying to get my school stuff out of the way for Winter Break, and in an hour of trying this sentence is the first thing I’ve accomplished, because every piece of technology I own is falling apart on me all at once. The phone can’t grab a signal to save its life, the laptop won’t load anything, and the iPad is being a bitch about pairing with my keyboard. I have a lot of school stuff to do today– my plan is to have nothing work-related hanging over my head for the rest of my break so I can focus on the bathroom and, well, lazing around, and that’s not going to work if my entire kit betrays me at once. In particular the laptop, which I think I’ve got behaving again– it hasn’t deleted this yet, for instance– has me alarmed, as it’s about four years old by now and starting to show its age. In the strictest sense of the word, I can afford to go buy a new laptop this afternoon, but I made it a line item in the grant and I’m really hoping that I can keep it going until spring and then find out somebody else is gonna buy one for me. We’ll see.

Ignore the condition of my bathtub– that’s a consequence of the filter I chose; while I’m not going to pretend my tub is pristine it certainly doesn’t actually look that bad– and take a look at that wall. That’s maybe 40 minutes of work yesterday evening, which means that if I put a couple of hours into it tonight stripping the wallpaper from the two walls that need it done right away is going to be a much, much easier project than I had anticipated. I basically just ran a scoring tool over the wall a bunch of times and then applied hot water– from the teapot on my stove into a Febreze bottle and then poured over a rag. I had initially had the idea that I’d use the Febreze bottle and just spray the hot water directly into the wall; it turns out that aerosolizing even very hot water that way cools it off instantly. I can literally spray water from a plastic bottle that is too hot to hold directly onto my arm and it feels cold, so using a rag was the only way to do it. The wall still feels a little rough to the touch but it looks great; I figure a little cleaning and it’ll feel fine too.

This is good; I needed the first project to go well, even if it was a simple one. The next step is to knock out the bulkhead and install the new shower fan, which is not going to be simple. Hoping to get started with that on Sunday and Monday; I’ll keep you updated on the disaster. Whee!

Terrible Decisions update: The Big List of Lists

On December 5, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy10 Comments

So… remember the bathroom update? I haven’t mentioned it in a while because school started and we had to push everything back to when I had the time and the sanity to do it: in other words, winter break. Which is in three weeks, which means that the planning has shifted into high gear. I put this together tonight; I’m sharing it with you guys because 1) I think it might be entertaining to see just how unprepared I am to do this right and 2) I’m hoping people smarter than me will spot issues that I might not be aware of yet.

Copied and pasted from Evernote, here you go:

Project 1: Eliminate bulkhead

1) Clear insulation away from inside attic.
2) Remove existing bathroom fan.
3) Demolish bulkhead.
4) Secure/install new bathroom fan.
5) Install new cement board ceiling.

Potential issues: 1) Electrical incompatibilities; 2) structural incompatibilities; 3) Incompatibilities with position of vent ductwork.

Necessary purchases: 1) Cement board; 2) Screws; 3) drywall mud 4) mudding tools/sandpaper

Possible purchases: 1) 2x4s for structure? 2) possibly something to extend/move vent ductwork. 3) moisture barrier 4) new wiring (hopefully not)

Timeline: 1 day.

Project 2: Demolition of existing bathtub surround.

1) Pull down tile.
2) Pull down drywall.
3) Remove existing shower fixtures.

Potential issues: 1) Mold issues behind wall; 2) leak issues behind wall; 3) plumbing incompatibilities with new shower hardware (call plumber for this if necessary)

Necessary purchases: None for demolition, but we should have shower hardware before doing this so that we can compare it to what’s behind the wall.

Possible purchases: None.

Timeline: A couple of hours for demo and clean-up; possibly a couple of days if we have to wait for a plumber (can do other two walls while waiting)

Project 3: Construction of new bathtub surround/ installation of new shower hardware.

1) Install moisture barrier (???), cement board, second waterproofing layer?
2) Measure/drill holes for shower hardware
3) Mortar, tile, grout.

Potential issues: I probably suck at this. Measure thirty times before tiling once. Make absolutely sure we have carefully researched every step before doing the work; only one chance to do this right. Terror. Do we mud cement board before putting tile on? Assume no, but find out.

Necessary purchases: Cement board, screws, possible sheeting for moisture barrier/waterproofing layer (spread-on?), shower hardware, tile cutter (borrowed/rented), mortar, grout, mortar/grouting tools

Possible purchases: None I can think of.

Timeline: At least a full day; probably two, especially if we need a plumber before doing one of the walls.

***WORK CAN STOP INDEFINITELY AT THIS POINT***

Project 4: Demolish rest of bathroom

1) Carefully remove mirror from wall; take downstairs
2) Remove hardware from walls
3) Demolish sink/vanity (plumbing will be a pain in the ass, since I don’t know how to remove it)
4) Drain & remove toilet.
5) Tear out drywall behind toilet, where tub was leaking
6) Remove tile kickplate around base of walls
7) Remove door and door…frame?
8) Remove floor tile.
9) If putting in floor heating, pull drywall on wall that we need to run wiring through.

Potential issues: Removing the floor tile is expected to be a pain in the ass. Dealing with the plumbing to remove the sink could potentially be difficult. Hopefully do all this with as little damage as possible to existing drywall other than the piece we know we need to replace. Removing the painted door frame without damaging the drywall seems… optimistic.

Necessary purchases: None, unless a special tool is needed to remove the linoleum floor tile; unexpected.

Possible purchases: None that I can think of.

Timeline: Please, God, don’t let this take longer than a day.

Project 5: Fix rest of bathroom.

1) Install floor heating, if that’s happening. Possibly replace power switch on wall if needed.
2) Install new drywall as needed. Mud, sand, etc.
3) Install new tile floor
4) Install new vanity, including necessary plumbing hookups. In process, attach new sink to new vanity. Also attach new sink hardware to new sink once it’s attached to the vanity.
5) Install new toilet
6) Cut door to size for new flooring; reinstall
7) Install new framing for door (match old, if possible)
8) Repaint (before or after vanity installation? Hmm.)
9) Hang new mirror and new hardware

Potential issues: I have no idea how to do any of these things. Timing on painting. Electrical work necessary for floor heating may be problematic. Tile must be measured and cut perfectly the first time, and I’ve never done it before. Plumbing hookups on vanity must be leak-free. Toilet must be leak-free. New door framing must line up. Drywall needs to be proper size and look right when mudded. No good way to cut door down.

Necessary purchases: Mortar, grout, drywall, mud, screws, acquire circular saw (borrow), door framing, paint, new hardware.

Possible purchases: Floor heating unit.

Timeline: God help me, hopefully only a couple of days.

Don’t read this if you respect me

On September 20, 2013September 19, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy8 Comments

Is_it_can_be_hugs_tiem_now_spider

…I fully expect this to be my most popular post of all time, by the way.

Alongside this whole “don’t yell at kids” thing I’ve been doing lately I’ve been trying in general to become a gentler person. At some point in the last few weeks I decided (possibly at the spirited urging of some internet people) that I wasn’t going to be automatically killing spiders any longer. Seeing a spider no longer means trying to kill a spider. They eat other bugs. This is good, right? We like spiders; we should keep them around.

There’s been a spider living in my bathroom for the last week or so. Just a little house spider type of dude, one of the almost-transparent kinds, not like the black monstrosity I killed in the tub not too long ago (and, I think, blogged about, but I’m not gonna go looking right now.) He’s been hanging out in the upper corners of the bathroom, so even if I were inclined to kill him, he’d be hard to reach and I’d have to stand on something– no real point, right? So for several days every time I’ve gone into the bathroom I’ve spent a few seconds looking around to see if I could spot him. The other day– Wednesday morning, maybe?– he happened to scuttle into the laundry room before I closed the door, and I’ve not seen him in the bathroom since. Which, weirdly, was sorta sad. I’d started thinking of him as a bit of a pet. For all I know, the dog ate him.

My wife went down into our (more-or-less unfinished) basement tonight to go through some stuff and called me down; it rained like hell all day today and we had some water on the floor in the utility room and, as it turned out, some more– inexplicably in the middle of the damn room– in the main area down there. I discovered the wet area in the main room by accident– by stepping in it, wearing socks. Which led me to take my socks off and cuff my jeans a bit, as my jeans are generally a bit too long when I’m not wearing shoes. Several times as we were poking around looking for wet spots (shut up, you’re gross) I walked through cobwebs. They don’t freak me out like they do some people but they’re still kinda skeevy, y’know? Nobody likes walking through cobwebs.

Being bald and walking through cobwebs is more unpleasant than usual, by the way. Trust me.

Anyway, I’m brushing myself off every three seconds and my feet are cold and my pants and socks are wet and WHY THE HELL DOES EVERYTHING IN THIS HOUSE LEAK ALL THE SUDDEN JESUS CHRIST and suddenly it occurs to me that I have to use the bathroom. There is no bathroom in the basement. And, believe me, ordinary “have to use the bathroom” types of experiences get rather radically worse quickly when you have to use the bathroom while barefoot on a cold tile floor and wet.

“Gotta go,” I told my wife, and headed upstairs.

Where I entered the bathroom and, well, went. This was, shall we say, a multiple event, necessitating a seated position, and because I’m like that I grabbed a book on the way into the bathroom. (There’s a post coming about John Green, by the way.) So I’m seated and reading my book and taking care of business… and my fucking pet spider drops onto the top of my head, scuttles off, lands on the book, and then drops into my underwear.

I will allow you to imagine the sequence of events that followed, as my skill as an author cannot do justice to what actually occurred.

I kill spiders on sight again, by the way.