Master Bath Remodel: Part 2

My brother stopped by the house to check out the demo progress and made a suggestion.  He proposed that we probably didn't need an eight foot long shower, and it might be nice to add some cabinet storage at one end.  I ran it by Nel and she agreed.  I re-routed a few wires and added some extra studs in the walls in preparation.  Since it was my brothers bright idea, I recruited him to help (I bet he never makes that mistake again).  Rather than build a cabinet from scratch, we found a prefab unit and my brother came over a couple nights to help me frame it in.  

It looks simple, but it's actually a little trickier than you would think.  Framing a cabinet in is easy enough, but you have to think not just three dimensionally, but also about thickness.  Every surface you create will eventually be covered with cement board and tile, and it all has to line up cleanly later in the process.  We also framed up a seat for the space behind the cabinet.  Now the shower was ready for the plumber.

The first thing the plumber had to address was removal of the vent line / stripper pole in the middle of the floor.  The only way to do that was to bust out the slab and run the drain and vent line back across under the floor and up through the wall.  

He also valved the shower for two units.  We considered putting one of those extremely complicated multi-head units with lights and steam and everything else, but decided it was probably something we'd never use.  We settled on a standard unit on one wall and a rain shower unit in the ceiling.  

He then floated the floor, basically creating the base for the shower pan with a slight slope leading to the drain.  He left this to dry overnight and planned to return in a few days to set the liner.  I took advantage of the wait to install a couple of recessed lights in the shower.  I recruited Barry to help me with this one.  It was fairly simple and we got it done one afternoon with a couple hours to spare before our golf league teed off.

Our plumber returned and created the pan for the shower.  I boxed out some cubbies  for soap and shampoo, etc., and Nel and I put insulation in most of the gaps.  I'm not sure the insulation is necessary since these are all inside walls, but it can't hurt.  The shower is now ready for the tile guys.  The guy I've used in the past was too busy to do the work at the moment, so I found another company and set it up.

A little DIY tip:  Make sure you don't seal up any cats actually IN the walls of your home when doing construction projects.  Their purring can crack the drywall over time.  :-)

To be continued...         

Master Bath Remodel: Part 1

The master bath in our home isn't particularly functional and is certainly dated.  We haven't messed with it much because we weren't 100% sure what we wanted to do with it.  There's nothing like coming home from a long weekend out of town and finding the ceiling caved in to move a project to the top of the list.

This is what the master looked like when we bought the house:

There were two smallish walk-in closets, but we knocked a wall out of one and turned an extra bedroom on the other side of it into a huge walk-in closet.  The bottom picture shows the biggest problem we have with the room.  The shower is a tiny, elevated death trap that Nel doesn't even use and I think I've been in the tub once, and that was only because I was injured and needed a place to bleed.  We had talked about knocking all of this out and building one big shower, but just hadn't committed entirely.  

Then we went out of town for a few days and came home to find this:

As a homeowner FYI - the water leak was actually caused by the 2nd floor AC unit.  When we left town I turned the temp up on the downstairs unit but didn't mess with the upstairs unit.  With the 1st floor warming up, the 2nd floor unit was working hard for a few days.  Apparently the drain line runs down from the attic way up above the master bath.  The line was clogged to some degree, but not completely.  However, since the 2nd floor unit was running so much while we were gone it caused water to back up the line about 10 feet and overflow at an open connection.  It took us a while to figure this out because we couldn't replicate the leak since we had turned the 1st floor AC down when we got home and the AC isn't located anywhere near this area.  Once we did figure it out I got our plumber to fix the leak and we decided we might as well go ahead and remodel the whole thing.

The first step was to dry everything out.  I called a company that specializes in this sort of thing and they set up seven fans and two dehumidifiers for a few days.  It was LOUD.  We found lots of excuses to get out of the house.

The next step was to demo the area.  I decided to do it myself - ugg!  It always sounds so simple, but houses put up a fight.  

  
When they built the place they had actually bricked in the tub.  The bricks weren't really a problem, but the concrete and mortar were.  That stuff did not want to come out.

It did give me a rare opportunity to utilize my sledgehammer.  Notice the eye protection?  Safety first!

Slowly but surely I beat the concrete into submission, and also revealed quite a bit of water damage under the shower pan.  It was all coming out anyway, so no big deal.  My buddy Barry and my brother Michael helped me get the massive cast iron tub out of the house.  Branelle helped me rip out the tile floor and we were nearly ready to start building.  There was just a single vent line in the way that would have to be re-routed by our plumber, but otherwise everything was ready to go.

I tried to convince Nel that having a stripper pole in the shower would be "sweet" (and a lot cheaper than re-routing it), but she didn't go for it.

To be continued.....

1998 Volvo C70

Whenever I go a long span without writing anything I usually try to get back in the groove with a quick and easy 'Random Vehicle Blog'.  Today is no exception, so here goes:

The random selector tonight has given me……..

1998 Volvo C70

In spite of my recent disenchantment with Volvo, I recall really liking this car back when I had it.  The C70 was never a hot seller here in the US.  It's a shame it didn't catch on, because they're quite pleasant cars to drive.  This particular one had a manual transmission that was as easy and smooth as any manual I've owned.  Believe it or not, I even loved the "Saffron Gold" color as well.  It stood out from the croud.

The interior was comfortable and the car even had an almost useable back seat.  And while the turbo-charged 5-cylinder wasn't a beast, it was more than adequate for most driving.  As you would expect from Volvo, the car had an abundance of safety and luxury features.  I'm not sure I would have changed much.

 

I eventually sold this car to a college kid who flew in to pick it up.  He was thrilled when he left and his father was thrilled when he got home in one piece without a ticket.  This was a fun car while I had it and I drove it often.  They're pretty cheap now, but based on my recent Volvo experiences cheap to buy doesn't always mean cheap to own.