We Have Walls Again!

Before I go into what I did over the weekend, I just want to report that after a full week of working at my new job, I really feel good about it. I think I'm in a good position to be very valuable and I really like my co-workers! Not to mention I'll get to use my brain again!

Anyway, after the numerous slowdowns and weekends with no progress lately, I was determined to get the walls up this weekend! My goal for the whole project is to be done (or at least tiled) by the end of May. Each weekend I'm able to actually able to get some work done, the bathroom starts resembling a bathroom more and more.

Last weekend Cass and I bought the backer board but then it sat in my truck for a whole week because I was sick and totally drained over that weekend. I started this weekend by putting up the three sheets of board on the widest wall since it was the easiest wall. No fixtures to cut out or anything. Just three 4' sheets.

After doing that and before I got stupid, I capped off the plumbing for the shower and opened the shower valve to make sure that every bit of plumbing I'd installed would hold pressure. Not just the valves and water hammers I installed back in March, but also the pipe and elbow running up from the valve to the showerhead. Not a drip! That made me happy.

I then got started on the wall opposite the showerhead. This wall is going to have recessed, tiled shelves. We bought these prefabricated shelves from the Tile Shop because we really liked how the finished product looked in the store. This of course meant I got to use my rotary cutting tool again! Man, am I EVER glad I bought that tool. Cutting the holes out for the shelves and shower fixtures would've been a nightmare with regular hand tools. The circular saw and the cement board blade were even more worth every penny. I'da been cutting cement board until I turned 40 if not for that well spent $80.

I stopped on Saturday after putting up the first shelf (the red one) and the surrounding backer board. Sunday I started right back where I left off and finished the recessed shelf wall. Because of the configuration of the shelves, I ended up cutting a sheet of backer board in the shape of an "H". I was a little worried about the structural integrity of the crossbar in the "H", so I ran a stringer between the studs so it'd have some extra support behind it.

That wrapped up the shelf wall. Finally, I had the showerhead wall. This wall turned out to be quite simple despite my own expectations. I measured twice (as the old adage suggests) and cut once and Bingo! The fixtures fit the holes I cut like a glove. Before I closed up the last bit of the wall with backer board, I wanted to leave my mark on this job. I know the bathroom's not done yet, but it was my last chance to do this.



After nearly killing myself standing awkwardly on a step stool so I could get leverage on the last few screws, I got the last piece of backer board in place! Apart from the door frame and a couple slim pieces of drywall I need to hang again, there are no more studs exposed! It's amazing how rewarding that accomplishment is!

More exciting developments are sure to follow! Stay tuned!

Finally Plumbed

Well, that was annoying!

I finally got the plumbing for the shower finished! Please hold your applause! I know it's an incredible victory, but it did not come before many failures!

You may remember this photo (left) from my last blog entry. It was the triumphant photo I took of what I thought to be the finished product (of the plumbing at least), only to have it spring a leak in what was probably the worst and most expensive location possible. At the rough-in valve. Because I'm not brave (or stupid) enough to try and disassemble everything, clean it, and try it again, it meant I had to buy all new components for a pretty fair chunk of what I did! On top of that I came to find out that I reused a few components that I shouldn't have also.

So, after cutting out the mistake areas, I ended up with this. (Right) D'OH! Short story even shorter, I got everything installed without a hitch! It holds pressure perfectly and because I'm such a pro at sweating copper now ;-), it only took me a couple hours to get everything cut and soldered into place. On Sunday the fun began! I picked up a new tool...the kind that can easily lop off a finger in the blink of an eye (the best kind :-D). Not to mention a gnarly blade for it that eats cement board for breakfast! (Yes, I photoshopped the blade into the photo because I neglected to take a picture of it.) If you're doing any tiling and need to cut Hardie backer board, DUDE this is the blade for the job! I mean, it's called a HardieBlade for cryin' out loud. It cuts Hardie cement board like a hot knife through butter. I also got to use my new Porter Cable rotary cutting tool with a cement cutting bit to cut out the hole for the toilet flange and water line in the backer board for the floor.

This felt like a huge win for me because I finally met my goal from two weekends ago. Pretty soon, I'll be laying tile down. Pretty exciting! Plus it was the first real progress I'd made in two weeks. Set backs are so annoying when weekends are the only days you have to work on a project like this.

More to come soon! Thanks for reading.

EDIT: Forgot to mention a nifty little fix I was given by suggestion from my Dad. Since the length of pipe going up to the showerhead elbow from the valve was kind of long, the showerhead would've felt wobbly even though the elbow was screwed to a stringer at the top. So I ran another stringer behind the pipe about mid way up and used some plumbers tape to fasten it to the stringer. To prevent electrolysis (which my Dad reminded me about, Thanks Dad!) I cut a small piece of the rubber shower membrane and jammed it between the tape and the copper! The showerhead is going to be solid as a rock, now!

The Past Two Weeks

As I said in my last post, two weekends ago I put drywall back up on the studs. So here are a few pictures I took from that. I got to use my new rotary cutting tool to cut out the openings for the light switches and the duct register. Boy does that tool make a difference!
Also, I found what I believe to be a mistake on the builder's part that I had to monkey around with. The sewer exhaust pipe that runs up the wall and out the roof runs up the wall behind the toilet in this bathroom. Again, who am I to question the contractors since I'm not in any construction related profession, but seriously...is that pipe really supposed to protrude from the studs like that? I'm guessing not. It makes putting up drywall pretty tough. I ended up having to bend a piece of drywall about a 1/4" over the pipe. Initially I thought maybe it was due to general shifting and settling of the house over 30 years of existence, but then I realized the builders cut the floor a considerable distance around the pipe which leads me to believe otherwise. Whatever, not that big a deal.

On to this past weekend! I failed to meet my goal this weekend, big surprise there, but hey I'm a computer nerd. I mean what do you expect? What I did get done is the plumbing for the shower. Sorta...

I bought this low profile pipe cutting tool. An absolute must have for jobs like this where room to work is scarce! Chopped off the old valve, not before I turned the water off to the house of course, and got started with reengineering the plumbing to work with our new single handle valve fitting. This was not my first experience with sweating copper, however it was my first time doing it on my own. So I took my time and tried to do it right. The first thing I had to do was move the water hammers down. You'll probably notice the plumbers tape on either end of the old valve. The person who plumbed this shower used that instead of nailing a stringer between the studs and mounting the valve to the stringer because they put the water hammers too high on the pipes such that they were in the way of where the stringer would've gone. Brilliant! Needless to say, I wasn't about to do a repeat of that so I trimmed back the water lines and put things where they should be. By the end of Saturday I believed I had everything plumbed and in place, so I turned the water back on to the house. Everything seemed to be holding the pressure well...for about 3 minutes. A hairpin leak started at one of the gate valve joints! D'OH! Luckily it happened on the closed side of the valve, so I could still shut the water to the shower off without having to turn off the water to the house.

On Sunday, I got a replacement gate valve and fixed the leak. It looked to me like everything was hunky dory! I turned the water back on to the shower and sat and watched it for a few minutes. A seeping leak developed on the cold water line. Curses! I think it's worth mentioning that the two joints that developed leaks are two of the first four joints I soldered together. Since a plumbing problem would be a total bear to fix once this bathroom's finished, I'm going to cut out those first joints and redo them. After I did those joints I finally started to get a feel for it, So, I'm confident the rest of the joints I did are water tight.