Tag Archives: Renovation

Plumbing Nightmares

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I actually had a nightmare the other night about paint.  We owned a house and for some reason had cut out a huge part of a wall, but were going to put it back ourselves (lots of drywall work).  I looked at one of the remaining walls and the sheen of the paint used was all over the map, flat to gloss.  Someone started painting and accidentally mixed in streaks of black and other colors.  I awoke from that nightmare into one that might be worse.  A broken pipe in the wall.

The new house’s two spare bathrooms have pedestal sinks.  They look fine, but as I found out are dreadful to work on.  I think they must install all the faucet and drain hardware, then move them into position on the stand.  My simple faucet switch out turned into a total sink removal.

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But wait, there’s more!  Every supply valve in this house leaks when you touch it.  The valves are CPVC pipes with some kind of copper washer crushed on.  Impossible to remove.  In trying to get the valve apart so I could cut close to that copper washer I broke the cold line off in the wall.  This was at about 8:30 at night.  Crestfallen doesn’t begin to describe my state.

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Yeah, this little guy right here.  I don’t trust CPVC any more, and wish they had used copper instead.  I cut a hole in the wall and inspected.  The next day my oscillating multitool and I had made a big hole in the wall and repaired the pipe.

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Not exactly gorgeous, but no leaks and I could have the water turned on again.  With this big gash, reinstalling the pedestal sink was not going to happen.

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We picked out a nice little vanity that matched the rest of the bathroom to replace it.  The pedestal sink was high enough that a lot of drywall mudding and painting had to happen before the new vanity could be installed.  Friday night I broke the pipe off.  By Monday I had the pipe repaired, the wall patched primed and painted, and the new vanity in.  That is what a long weekend can do for ya.

In the mean time we removed the other bathroom’s pedestal sink and replaced it with a similar vanity, replaced both toilets, and took care of a half dozen other small things.  It will all be over soon.

Laundry Room Renovation

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A little time off from work means a little time to spend on another home renovation.  Lets hit the laundry room!  First, the before.  We pulled the doors off and all the contents out.  There was no flooring in here when we bought the house.

Looking in from house
Looking in from garage

In removing the door to the garage I found an interesting discovery.  There were two funny patched holes in the top of the door case.  Removing all the case I found part of two broken off drill bits.  In some distant past, the security system installers had a difficult day!

These were hidden in the door casing
Removed trophies from the house

With “demo” done I went to work prepping the floor and tiling.  The first day was rough.  I got delayed and didn’t do prep on the previous day as I had intended.  Thankfully my wonderful wife emptied all the shelves before I got started.  More bad luck struck when the bag of mortar ran out sooner than I thought it would.  Not a great start, but at least I got most of the tiling done on day 1.

View from house
From inside

Day 2

Ok, day one had some snags, but day two should be more straight forward.  I ran to pickup the mortar, and found out they were out of grout.  I had half a bag left over from the font room, but not enough to finish.  That will involve a long trip to an alternate lowes.  Still, I was able to finish up the remaining tile at a reasonable hour.

DSC_0377 ResizedThe rest of the day I broke out all my doors and molding for a big paint off.  Doing latex with an hvlp gun is a little touch and go.  Every time I mix a new batch of paint, the settings change.  I am really a hack at it, but the results are still a lot better and faster than rolling.

Door and baseboard molding
Garage door, and door into rest of the house

At least it would be faster if I hadn’t put too much down, and then had to deal with Florida’s wonderful 80% humidity winter.  The metal door took hours to dry and ended up having a lot of runs.  I stopped what I could with a brush and tried to even things out.  In the end I had to bring it into the garage, hours later, still wet.  I had to roller paint the casings after I installed them anyways, so it got a touchup with that job.

End of day 2 was not a complete disaster, but I spent a lot of time monkeying with wet paint and driving beachside to get grout.

Day 3

Go go go it is time to grout!  I cleaned up the floor and mixed up a few batches of grout.  It is a messy job, and you have to clean the tiles 100 times to get the haze off.  Still though, I love grouting.  In just a few swipes of the sponge you can making everything look right with the world.  All the madness of renovation settles down into calm (mostly) even lines of beautiful grout.

Garage view
House view

While I waited for grout, there were a number of other things around the house that needed attention.  Later in the day I braved some walking on the tile to install the two casings.  It is kind of astonishing how twisted and out of square a house can be and still look ok to the casual observer.  I guess that is why we have shims!

Day 4

The final count down.  It is Christmas eve, and I HAVE to finish today.  This is the last of my days allotted to home renovation.  Let the molding begin!

I did a very basic baseboard molding around all the places you would normally see.  No sense in buying another piece to install behind a dryer.  There wasn’t anything before, so this adds a nice touch.  Both the doors had their molding installed and everything got caulked and touched up.  Getting molding to all fit right and have the nail holes filled properly is really tedious but worth the effort.  I was done, stick a fork in me!!!

Day 5ish

After a brief foray to see family we had some time to put everything back together.  Newly installed adjustable wire shelving offers more storage than before and makes it feel more open.  The lighter flooring helps too.  I could have painted it a brighter color, but the walls were mostly in good shape, and I kind of like the color it started as.

No renovation will change the fact that it is a small room in a house with not quite enough closet space.  Still, I am really happy with the results.  The soreness and smashed fingers will pass in days, but the laundry room will last for years.