Tag: bathrooms

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Hell Yeah edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Quite a lot accomplished in the last 24 hours or so.
IMG_2781That is the bathroom floor covered in horrid blue glue and Tavy Thin Skin, which is a product I’d never heard of a week ago designed to make it easy to tile over vinyl.  I spent a fair amount of time Googling and searching around and discovered that, while I found a lot of contractor types who hadn’t used it going “Man, I don’t see how that will work well,” I couldn’t find anyone who had used it and had bad results from their floor.  The biggest complaints were about spreading the glue and that was something I felt like I could deal with.  We did not get to the skimcoat yesterday, but we did do it this morning:

IMG_2797

So.  Nice clean layer of thinset laid down; tomorrow we tile.  That is probably going to extend into Monday but I’m hoping we can get it done in a day; it’ll depend on how easy it is to cut around the toilet and the floor register and to deal with the two rows where we basically just have to re-cut the rectangle on the tile.

A day after the tile is set, grout.

A day after the grout, the sink and the toilet (at least the toilet; I’m predicting complications with the sink) goes back in, along with the door, and we are set, son.  At least until we decide what to do with the electrical.  The lamps are still going to be in the wrong place, and we won’t be putting the mirror up until we decide where to put lighting.  But basically everything below the waist will be finished.

Also completed today and yesterday: Cut the trim around the door so that the tile could go under it, trimmed the door itself by half an inch, then yanked a door from our other bathroom and trimmed it by half an inch.  That door in particular has been a huge problem since we got the house; at some point some water got between the vinyl and the subfloor in there and bubbled the tile up, and the door’s been extremely difficult to open and close, to the point where we rarely use it.

No longer.  Fixed as hell.  We’ve both been just opening and closing it for the hell of it.

Also fixed: every folding closet door in the house, damn near all of which were off their tracks.  I’m kicking myself for this one; turns out these are extremely easy to fix, it’s just not immediately obvious how to do it.

Important detail: not a bit of this project (and by “project,” I’m extending all the way back to the very beginning) would have been possible without the internet.  We would have made so many mistakes.  I love being able to look shit up and find videos on how to do stuff any time I need it.

And now I shall go to my other job, and endeavor not to fall asleep behind my counter.

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Friday

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Basically took yesterday off from bathroom stuff because of the carpet/tile people coming in to clean; clearing the living room and dining room of anything we could carry counted as work enough, and I spent the day in here working on Searching for Malumba.

I will be satisfied with myself if, by the end of the day, I have:

  • Cut the door trim so that the tile fits underneath it (already done!)
  • Fixed the last couple of screws on the plywood piece so that they’re flush
  • Measured, cut and glued down the Tavy Thin Skin over the vinyl tile and plywood
  • Restored the living room and dining room to usable status

I will consider it a bonus if I have also:

  • Laid down a skim coat of mortar over the Thin Skin.

No tiling is planned for today.  I’m hoping to get that done this weekend, and I should be able to, especially if I get that skimcoat done.

After

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Well… uh… the carpet looks *great*, but photographs do not do it justice.  Like, my phone is showing phantom dirt, or maybe it’s got a little time machine attached to the lens that I didn’t know was there before, or something like that, and the carpet looks muddy and disgusting despite no longer being muddy and disgusting.

The grout in the entryway actually looks about the same, which is moderately disappointing.

Here; I dry-fit some of the floor tile in the bathroom today.  Have a picture of that.

CKnw7XZWcAAUnIJ

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: mystery WTF addendum!

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

That’s hardwood.  From the BEDROOM.  And it is a good 1/8″ higher than the subfloor around it, which is gonna play hell with leveling this mess.

Those of you with a carpentry/contracting background are welcome to speculate as to just why the hell the bedroom’s flooring extends an inch and a half into the bathroom.  I’m hornswoggled.

  

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Screw your plans, boy! edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

So the big job today was to pull the sink. This is the sink; by the time I took this picture I had already removed the doors from the front of the vanity to make getting at the rest of the thing easier:
IMG_2765

I’ve never actually disconnected a sink from a wall, mind you, so (much like every other step in this process) I’m being real careful to make sure not to fuck anything up along the way.  First step in pulling a bathroom sink is to turn off the water. I didn’t get a picture, because cutting the water to the toilet was a piece of cake.  The shutoff valves for the sink, on the other hand, were 1) stuck and 2) started crumbling in my hand when I tried to apply a bit more force to them.

I don’t know much, but I know when I’m about to make a big mistake, and shearing the shutoff valve sure as shit sounded like a big mistake.  So, maybe ten minutes into the big job of the day, I called a halt and called a plumber.  That was at maybe 9:00 this morning or so; it’s 3:15 now and the plumber left about half an hour ago, so yay for folks who can get out quickly.  The plumber disconnected the sink for me and replaced the shutoff valves, all the while swearing at the shitty plumbing job the builders had done– which is not the first time I’ve heard that.  Every plumber who has ever entered this house has left wanting to travel back in town and beat hell out of the dude who built the place.

There was some careful examination of the way the sink attached to the vanity, because it looked like the most obvious way to pull the sink out had a good risk of dropping it through the countertop, potentially wrecking my new shutoff valves.  This seemed bad.

So I went with the second most obvious way, and just grabbed the countertop and yanked. Amazingly, it worked:

IMG_2766

Just in case you were wondering if this was a quality vanity or not:

IMG_2767

And then we pulled the rest of the thing, and the swearing started, and the swearing really hasn’t stopped yet; I’m actually swearing uncontrollably under my breath while I’m typing this, because this fucking bullshit was what was under the vanity:IMG_2768

Make sure you look closely, there, and note that several of the long broken pieces on the right there actually match missing pieces elsewhere on the tile, meaning that they tried to pull up the tile, gave up quickly, and then just threw the shit under the vanity.

IMG_2769Also, five will get you twenty that that’s asbestos tile, and it’s also a good quarter-inch lower than the rest of the floor, meaning I have to redo my flooring plan again.  I’m hoping I can just find a piece of plywood of the right size and slap the fucker in place, because otherwise I’m going to have to pull the entire floor, because unless I miss my guess those tiles are made of cancer.

Take a wild guess how happy I am right now.

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Today’s agenda

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Got a lot done yesterday, including averting/dealing with one major setback when the floor didn’t turn out to be quite what we thought it was.  Ordered new underlayment for the tile today that ought to be here by Friday, so we didn’t lose much time over it.

Anyway, here’s what’s happening today:

  • Pull out the old sink and vanity
  • Get rid of the rest of the wallpaper
  • RedGard and mud the piece of cement board we put in yesterday
  • If time allows, dry-fit the floor tile

That’ll be a day, I think.  Whee!

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: The backonthehorsening

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy13 Comments

If you’ve been reading this blog for way too long, you may remember the Terrible Decisions series, in which my wife and I decided to redo our bathroom.  That process led to a (if I don’t mind saying so) good job re-tiling our shower, and then… stalled.

She has the week off. We are unstalling.

Hello, over-the-toilet shelf!FullSizeRender

Goodbye, over-the-toilet shelf!IMG_2751

Hello, floor trim tile!IMG_2753

Goodbye, floor trim tile!IMG_2754

Hello, toilet!IMG_2755

Goodbye, toilet!  Hello, wax ring!IMG_2756

Goodbye, wax ring!  Now, the raggedy hole in the wall there is the reason this entire nightmare project got started in the first place: we had a leak behind the tile, and the water was running down the side of the tub and basically turned that corner of the drywall into mud.  (I just spent ten minutes looking; I posted a picture of it at one point but hell if I can find it.)

That one simple thing– ripping that piece out– turned into a full-bathroom renovation.  Which we WILL FINISH this week because if we don’t we only have one toilet and I will not live in a house with one toilet.  At any rate:  I cut out the diseased part of the wall, carefully avoiding cutting a hole in the stack and thus necessitating what would probably be thousands of dollars in repair costs.
IMG_2759

Yes, I know this is cement board, not drywall, and you’re not supposed to use cement board in place of drywall.  However!  It’s also in the same spot as the bad part of the wall.  If we end up with the same leaking problem in the future, I want it leaking into cement board, which is going to be RedGarded and thus a lot more waterproof.  This part of the wall will be behind the toilet anyway and so the minor difference in texture shouldn’t be too noticeable.

IMG_2760

Next step:  Get rid of the rest of this goddamned wallpaper.  Which I expect to take the rest of the damn afternoon.  If not my entire life.IMG_2761

In which you don’t need to know this about me (again)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching8 Comments

screw-calm-i-need-coffee-1I stopped at McDonald’s for coffee on the way home from work today, if that tells you anything about my day.

You may recall this post about my issues with the bathrooms at my current place of business.  If not, I recommend reading it; it’s funny, in a terrible godawful why did you tell us that sort of way.  If not, allow me to quote myself, if I may:

There are two adult bathrooms at my new place of business.  One of them is a one-seater and is effectively a private men’s room for the office.  That bathroom has two problems:  1) it is directly outside the principal’s office and 2) I am one of only three men who might ever use it, and one of the other two is frequently not in the office, so not only is there a theoretical chance that my boss might hear me in there but if I power bomb the place everyone is going to know it was me.  This cannot stand.

It is my prep period.  I am in my office frantically trying to get some of my own job done before I have to go do someone else’s for a while.  I have, as it happens, already had a cup of coffee this morning.  Now, for most people, coffee is a diuretic.  For me, it has rather more… substantial effects, if you know what I mean and I hope you do.

…

Coffee makes me shit, is what I’m trying to say here.

So, yeah.  As it works out, both of the other men in the office are not currently in the office, meaning that I can basically do whatever I want in My Other Office with no worries.  I become aware of Impending Pressure and head off to do my business.

Meanwhile: the assistant principal is next door.  We have recently had a very serious bullying issue on one of our buses that she’s been straightening out, and she’s been using varying levels of severity depending on the level of insistence of the various children involved that they had nothing to do with it.  As it turns out, there is video.  Fairly a lot of video.  So each and every one of these lil’ motherfuckers is busted; it’s just a matter of how long they’re gonna lie before a hammer gets dropped on their heads.  The kid currently in her office is being very insistent that he’s done nothing and said nothing and at the moment the AP is simply sitting there calmly categorizing his lies for use later.

This will, as it turns out, not go well for him.

So, back to me: I’m doing my business.  I’m doing quite a lot of my business, as it turns out, and it occurs to me partway through that I ought to be really glad that there’s no chance anybody else is gonna be trying to get in here anytime soon.

I finish.  I wash my hands.

Thank God I washed my hands.

Because when I open the door, my assistant principal is standing immediately outside the bathroom, with the student, who has clearly spent my entire time in there bawling his eyes out.  I do not know how long they have been waiting.

“Go on in there and clean yourself up,” she says to him.

I have two choices at this point.  This bathroom ain’t fit for human habitation, and there is  no escaping the fact that I am the one who has ruined it.  I can either admit it and suggest that the boy use the ladies’ bathroom (which, much like ours, is a locking one-seater) or I can just shrug and let this boy enter into the bowels (see what I did there?) of Hell, where the sulfur in the air will surely blind him before he’s able to wash the tears from his face.

Instead of doing either of those things, I just died of shame on the spot.  This will be my final post; it is being typed by my spirit, which will remain bound to that bathroom for all eternity once I hit “Publish” on this post.

You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes, y’know?