Terrible Decisions: Chapter You Go To Hell and You Die

On April 19, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy4 Comments

Let’s not discuss how long it took to simultaneously obtain the time and the will to finish the cement boarding. Let’s also not discuss the extra hole next to the hole for the shower pipe (which is also new as of today) because thirteen and a half inches and fifteen and a half inches are not the same thing. Hell with it; there’s a board behind it and I’ll fill the fucker with mortar. It’ll be fine. And if it won’t, don’t tell me.

Next step, mortaring and taping all the seams. Then RedGard, which… well, that’ll be fun, for certain values of “fun.”

On the plus side, I managed to pull this all off without buying a new piece of cement board, which I didn’t think was gonna be possible.

Terrible decisions: holy crap I’m gonna die

On January 20, 2014January 20, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy4 Comments

I’m actually moderately more impressed by the destruction than the completed work. Other than a couple of slightly dodgy joins– that wall on the left that you can’t see really well was a *bitch*– this actually went pretty well, if messy and somewhat longer than I expected, but I expected it to last longer than I expected, if that makes any sense. I’m mostly posting this so you can see how effectively I’ve destroyed my bathroom, which I now have to get cleaned up before my son gets home and starts having to breathe concrete dust into his lungs. I figure that might be bad. This is actually the best picture of the work, because it’s so hard to get a good angle on that back wall, but you can see it in the mirror.

Here you can get a look at the bad joins on the left side, there– I think they’ll be OK once I put some mortar into them. If not, I’ll just sell the house. That wall turned out to be out of… plumb, I think? There’s three joists over there and the third one in the middle is slightly bulgier than the other two, which gave me hell, and plus the tub itself is unlevel so even finding a good starting point was hell. Plus that’s the wall I had to restructure so that I had something to attach the board to. I’m lucky that the only problems are a couple of slight gaps. I’m gonna have my father-in-law check my work before tiling, though. And oh holy hell am I not looking forward to doing the wall with the faucet on it.

These last pictures are just so you can see my mess:

And here’s the floor. Gotta go vacuum before the boy gets home. Entertainingly, the vacuum itself requires vacuuming.

Man, I’m looking forward to a shower.

Terrible decisions: not dumb yet

On January 20, 2014January 20, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

One down, four to go.

Terrible decisions: the setbackening

On January 20, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

I knew this was going to happen, but it’s still disappointing: the… rough-in valve, I think it’s called? (the plus-shaped thingy in the picture) for the new faucet and shower head does not appear to be terribly compatible with the one we have in place, so that all has to come out– and that is not, period, point-blank, no questions about it, work that I am capable of or interested in doing. So we can’t cover that wall up until we get a plumber out here, and we can’t get a plumber out here until Friday. So that somewhat limits the scale of the work we can get done today, but not in an unsatisfying way; it should still look like we got a crapton of work done by the end of the day if everything else goes well.

The new goal: get the cement board up on the two walls that don’t conceal plumbing. That’s all. And by “up,” all I mean right now is measured, cut, and screwed into the studs; while I have the proper seam tape for the cement board, I’m not even sure I plan to do that today, since I’m still sorting out what seem to be conflicting opinions on whether the joins on the cement board actually need to be separately mortared, and if they do, if they’re mortared before or after applying the tape. The dude at Lowe’s, who certainly sounded like he knew what he was doing, said that all we needed to do was tape the seams since we were tiling over it anyway and that we didn’t need to worry about joint compound; I’ve seen other sources that indicate that what we want to do is fill the seams, but what we want to use is the exact same mortar that we’ll use to install the tile. I feel like this makes one step into two steps in a way that doesn’t feel necessary, but I’ve not done enough reading to be confident yet on anything other than “definitely don’t use regular joint compound,” which is fine, because we didn’t buy any.

I’m confident on the measure/cut/screw part, which also involves a tiny bit of restudding (just adding a couple of support points for the cement board in places that are weird) and setting up a j-channel around the tub that will keep the cement board from resting on the tub. That should be enough for one day. We have to go get the boy at 4:30; that leaves us seven hours. Doable, I think. We’ll see.

There will be pictures later, of course, as I either fix things or destroy them. Or the world will be enveloped in flame. It’s a crapshoot!

Terrible Decisions: the repurchasing

On January 19, 2014January 19, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy7 Comments

Here’s what you’re looking at:

Six pieces of 5′ x 3′ Durock cement board;
3 1/2 gallons of Redgard;
Our new showerhead/faucet combo;
A six foot metal ruler that I plan to use as a straightedge (and, dammit, is too wide for the back of the shower, but it’ll still help to trim the Durock)
Three clean 5-gallon buckets;
A variety of painting implements and sponges and grouting tools and a notched trowel and an X-Acto knife and a few other things inside the buckets

Off-camera:

A hundred goddamn pounds, which seems crazily excessive now that I think about it but the guy insisted was the right amount for our square footage, of dry mortar;
25 pounds of grout;
An 8-foot wall stud that I need to cut to a three-foot length to give me something to attach the cement board to in a weird part of the wall;
20 feet of J-channel to set the cement board into on the tub;
Dual-sided sixteenth-inch tape to attach the J-channel to the tub;
Several hundred screws;
Several hundred spacers;
Mesh tape for the cement board;
Respirator masks, because I hear Redgard is nasty-smelling shit;
A caulk tube

Shit we forgot to buy:

A handful of wood screws to attach the aforementioned 2 x 4; we probably have some suitable ones in a drawer in the garage somewhere, though;
A caulk gun;
Some regular blue painter’s tape to tape tiles to each other while they’re setting;
Some other damn thing I can’t remember right now but hopefully either I or the wife will by the early-morning Lowe’s run tomorrow morning.

And we didn’t buy this today but:

You can see the side of our new vanity, which we had to take out of the box because we used the box for broken drywall and tile when we did the demolition;
Our new toilet (still in the box)
And a bunch of other shit that has nothing to do with the bathroom reno but is still piled up in that corner.

We’re out, like, $525 or something. And I am so gonna completely fuck up putting the walls up tomorrow. Be prepared for me to burn the house down and blame it on a spider or something.

Terrible Decisions: why not, one more

On January 1, 2014January 1, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy4 Comments

I’m done for the day– nails pulled, tub swept, vacuumed, and cleaned, 99% of the drywall out of the way. There’s a half-inch gap between the wall on the left and the back wall, and there’s still some drywall in the corners that I’m gonna have to use a chisel or something to get out, but it’s not something I feel like I have to worry about at this exact second. We can bathe the boy tonight, and that’s the important thing. I even clipped the dead wire and moved it out of the way so there’s no electrocution worries. (Yes, I know you can’t electrocute yourself with a dead wire. Still don’t want it dangling where my two-year-old has a chance of getting to it, especially if he’s in the tub at the time.)

Next step: rebuild.

Which is terrifying. 🙂

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!