Old vanity with man-made counter top

Old acrylic tub

Working on removing the tub surround

Tub surround totally out

Old lights and medicine cabinet

Tub surround partially out

Messy work area

Tub surround out

Sink supply lines seem a bit corroded, but I think they should be ok

Leftover linoleum tile underneath the cement board

water damaged plywood

ready for new tub

Plumbing done and subfloor repaired

water damage in plywood near the tub

New Delta universal rough fixture

Going to reuse the old tub drain assembly

Close-up of Delta universal rough fixture

Complete plumbing picture

I finally started remodeling our main bathroom several weeks ago. The first stage was demolition. Unfortunately, I forgot to take many before pictures, but that is life. I started off by removing the toilet. I got as much water out of it as possible through flushing, bucket, and towel. I took off the tank, and it is now downstairs. We like the toilet, so we will reuse it.

The next step was to remove the vanity, which was pretty straight forward. I took out the screws securing it to the wall, and disconnected the plumbing. There was one or two screws which were completely stripped, which I ended up cutting with my saws-all. Clare was kind enough to help me carry the vanity downstairs as well. I’m thinking of making it into a play bathroom for Spencer, since he really loves opening drawers and cabinets. So it is now filled with harmless everyday objects like cookie tins and egg cartons. I thought of filling it with toys, but it frequently seems that Spencer wants to play with “adult” stuff, not toys.

Once the vanity and toilet were removed, I was able to get most of the floor tile off. I pounded on the tile with an engineer’s hammer to break up the tiles. They came off fairly easy – much more easily than the floor tiles in the Spencer bathroom. It seems like there was not really much mortar on the tiles, so they probably weren’t installed very well.

I used a hammer and chisel and a pry bar to get off the tile around the tub surround. That was quite a bit of work, but it wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t exactly sure how it was attached. It turns out that it is attached to the walls with screws. I used an engineer hammer to get the tiles out, which worked really well. The added weight (compared to a claw hammer) really makes it more powerful. Once I got all the tiles off and removed the screws, I simply yanked on the surround to get it unstuck. I then did the same for the tub, and Clare helped me carry the tub out. It is currently in our yard. Last year our city had a throw away big stuff for free day. I’m hoping they do that again this year.

Once the tub was out, I could start removing the cement board. I considered trying to reuse it, but I didn’t think I would be able to get all the old mortar off it. I used the hammer and pry bar to get it up, and then had to remove the screws holding it down. It did not have any mortar between the cement board and the plywood, as I have been told to do. This is more evidence of shoddy construction, but it did make it easier to remove. Once I got the cement board up, I discovered some old linoleum tile underneath it. I worked a fair amount to get more of the tile off. I got all of the top layer off everywhere, but did end up leaving a bit of the adhesive layer in some parts.

After getting the cement board up and the tub out, I realized that part of the subfloor was rotten. This was not too much of a surprise, since we had noticed some leaks when we moved in. I had bought some extra plywood just in case this might happen. As it turns out, there was only a fairly small section which was rotten, and I was able to use a scrap piece of plywood to fix it. I cut a piece large enough so that I could screw it into three floor joists, to make sure it was plenty secure. The floor joists themselves seem to be in good condition.

The next step was to install the new fixture for the bath. We ended up going with a Delta Lewison. I really like how some of the Delta faucets have separate temperature and volume controls. We also had pretty good experience with Delta back in Indiana. I thought that the plumbing wouldn’t be too hard, since I already had some experience, but I was wrong. I guess maybe the third time it gets easier. I bought the couplings, elbows and connectors I needed, and decided to try to do some of the sweating before cutting off the old fixture. I think I have learned that this is not really worth it. I learned several more things from this experience:

1. Solder can get old. The 30+ year old solder I had from the Spencer house did not melt very easily. New solder helped a bunch
2. Solder both ends of a coupling at the same time. I tried soldering just one end, and some extra solder dripped down the coupling, make the other end unusable
3. Dry fit first before applying any solder paste. I accidentally used one 7″ piece and one 6″ piece of pipe, when I had been intending to use two 7″ pieces
4. Tighten any threaded joints with two wrenches. I initially used only one wrench, holding on to the mixing valve with the other hand. It ended up leaking, and I had to redo the whole thing

It took a bit longer than expected, but I did finally get the plumbing all done. I raised the level of the shower head by about 6″, so that it should be a bit nicer for tall people to shower.

The next step is to get the tub in and the floor tile.

In front of the butterfly pavilion

Harold and Fran came out to visit over Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately, none of the 300 days of sunshine per year in Denver occurred while they were here. We managed to enjoy outside a bit, but also found some indoor fun. On Saturday we went to thebutterfly pavilion, which is not too far from our house. They had several exhibits on insects, arachnids, and starfish, and a ton ofbutterflies. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, including Spencer.

I carried him in thebaby bjorn, and after about 20 minutes, realized that hewas ready to start facing forward, sincehe kept turning his head ti each side to see what was going on. Now he almost always faces forward, and is happy as a clam, as long as I don’t stop moving, and there is something exciting to look at.

When Ellen turned 30, she built a brick wall. It is a very nice brick wall. It didn’t seem like the Spencer house needed another brick wall, so instead I decided to build some cabinets/shelves/drawers. This was the final part of the bathroom project. Ellen and Dave also recently redid one of their bathrooms. They did it in just under one year. We have them beat at 18 months (longer is better, right?).

Since today is my very last full day in the Spencer house, I finally finished the cabinets last night, finishing around 12:20 a.m. (today). All I had to do was put in the trim which I had just finished staining and sealing. There were some tricky parts, especially the one piece right next to the wall. For this piece I put a shim next to the wall so I wouldn’t mar up the wall when I was hammering. Also, I am still not very good at hammering. Even after pre-drilling the holes, I bent about 1/3 of the nails. Maybe there is a trick I am missing. At any rate, it is finally done. It is not perfect by any means, but it looks much better than before, and I am pretty satisfied with it overall.

This weekend I worked some more on finishing up my final home improvement project in the Spencer house — the bathroom cabinets/shelves/drawers. The main thing left to do is the trim, which requires a lot of precision (and hopefully accuracy too). Yesterday I cut the remaining pieces of trim which I had salvaged from other projects, and then stripped them. I hate stripping. Especially since I was working in the cabin, and it was only a high of 30 degrees. I had a little electric space heater, but it did not really provide much heat.

Today I re-adjusted the drawers, since they weren’t quite level, and some of them didn’t close quite right. Since the wall next to the drawers is not completely straight, this caused some problems for the drawers. The opening near the top is slightly bigger than near the bottom. I probably could have fixed it more easily before I had put the countertop on, but you know what they say about hindsight. So I simply shimmed the runners for the drawers a bit, and that worked fairly well. Then I put all the trim into place, and marked where I wanted to drill holes. There are three pieces that go between the drawers that will be glued to the vertical trim pieces next to the drawers. I put 2 holes in each side of these cross-pieces, and 2 holes in the vertical pieces, and will then put small dowels in the holes, and glue them in place. I took Ellen’s advice and drilled the holes a bit bigger than the dowels to save room for the glue (and also to give me a bit of slop as well).

Now I just need to stain and seal the trim, then nail it into place. Almost done!

We both arrived Friday night around 8:30. We stopped by the house on the way back to Clare’s apartment so that Ellen could get a look at it. It was a very comfortable temperature, since Clare had gotten the new furnace installed on Tuesday. After looking around for awhile and discussing what we wanted to tackle, we headed back to Clare’s apartment, chatted a bit, then went to bed.

Saturday we slept in until about 7:45 or so, since Clare and Rob were both kind of sick. After some coffee and breakfast we headed over to the house with our supplies, and got to work. We had several tasks planned:

1. Install stove and dishwasher
2. Fix plumbing
3. Change locks
4. Clean
5. Paint family room

We did not end up getting to the last item at all. As it turns out, there were something wrong with every plumbing fixture in the house. Rob tackled the kitchen sink while Ellen worked on the bathrooms. The kitchen sink seemed to be leaking from the supply lines. After turning off the water, Rob re-taped the supply hoses, and then put them back on, and it seemed like they stopped leaking. Meanwhile Ellen snaked out both bathroom sinks, and then put in new traps as the old ones were quite clogged. Clare got to work on the door locks.

As we worked, we kept noticing new things to be done, and by 11:00 a.m. we had a pretty long list of stuff to buy. So Rob and Ellen went to Lowe’s to acquire stuff. They ended up spending almost 2 hours just at Lowe’s. On the way back they stopped at Chipotle to get some lunch, which was eaten while sitting on the fireplace, the only seat in the house so far.

While Ellen and Rob had been shopping, the stove had been delivered. After lunch Rob continued to work on the kitchen sink, while Ellen cleaned up the area by the stove, and Clare continued on the locks. Then Ellen and Rob hooked up the new gas stove. It even has a convection oven! (not true convection, with an additional heating element, but some convection nonetheless) Sometime in the afternoon, Rob decided to test the sprayer on the sink. No water came out at all. And shortly after this, it started leaking again. So we were able to get the dishwasher hooked up, but eventually decided to buy a new kitchen faucet. So around 7:00 we made another trip to Lowe’s, this time all 3 of us. We returned a few items we had not needed from the previous trip, and picked up a new faucet, plus some wood filler (for the lock project) and a few other miscellaneous items.

After the second Lowe’s trip, Clare ordered pizza and went to pick it up while Ellen and Rob installed the new faucet. It only took about 20 minutes to install, and there were no leaks. And best of all, we got a nice Moen faucet that has a sprayer built into the spigot for almost half off. We can’t resist a good deal.

We took the pizza back to Clare’s apartment, and enjoyed it with some PBR. There’s nothing like PBR after a hard day’s work.

Sunday morning we woke up about the same time, and left the apartment right about 9:00 to pick up the U-Haul that Clare had rented to move her stuff from the apartment to the house. Clare got the U-Haul while Rob dropped Ellen off at the house so she could do some more cleaning there while Rob was helping Clare move.

Rob helped Clare pack things up until about 10:00, when her friend Nick and his friend Nate came over to help move. Within about an hour, we had packed up the truck with the couch, tables, bed, and other big items, most of which Clare had bought from Craigslist in May. By about 11:45 we had unloaded everything in the house, and went across the street to the Thai restaurant for lunch. We are happy to be in a location where we can walk to 2 different grocery stores, our bank, and several good restaurants (Chipotle, Thai, and Middle Eastern).

After lunch, Nick and Nate took off, and we got back to work. Clare and Rob (especially Rob) had been pondering what sort of ladder to buy for painting. They had almost decided on a multi-purpose ladder, which could be used as an extension ladder and a step ladder, but Rob had misgivings about the fact that it didn’t have a paint tray, and that it didn’t seem comfortable to stand on for long periods of time. However, they couldn’t fit a big ladder in their car. Ellen and Rob almost bought a car-top carrier on Saturday to bring a ladder home, but Lowe’s didn’t sell any. Finally Saturday night it dawned on us that we could use the U-Haul! So after lunch Clare and Rob went to Lowe’s again, this time in the U-Haul. We bought both a 24 foot extension ladder and an 8 foot step ladder. Hopefully that should be tall enough for our cathedral ceiling family room. We also bought a new exterior door for the side of the garage, since the previous tenants had a really cheap door there that didn’t seal well at all, and was probably intended to be an interior door.

After taking back the truck, Rob cleaned out the gutters, which were absolutely stuffed. Next year we will have to get new gutters and fascia for the house. While Rob worked on the gutters, Ellen worked on putting in new valves in the bathtub and shower, both of which were leaking, and Clare worked on getting herself situated in her temporary living space. We set up her bed in the dining room, since we haven’t gotten the carpet replaced yet. That should happen in the next 2 weeks sometime. Clare also worked on hanging blinds in the living room / dining room / temporary bedroom.

After much fiddling around by both Ellen and Rob with the bathtub and shower plumbing, it was starting to look like we were not going to get it to stop leaking, but finally Rob discovered that it was simply that the new valves needed to be tightened themselves. So by the end of Sunday we had finally figured out all the plumbing problems, and we were able to shower in the morning before Clare took Ellen and Rob to the airport. All in all, it was a very productive weekend. We are looking forward to the second weekend, during which we hope to get the painting done.