March 2005

March 1, 2005: Well, we're trying to get the last details of the master bathroom finished, but it appears last month's huge push to get the bathroom finished depleted our remodeling juju, and it has not yet replenished itself. We did manage to get a second coat of paint on the bathroom door, but the doorknob has not arrived yet, the plumbing supply house sent the wrong nipples to install the faucets properly, and the window treatment needs a mounting bracket that we haven't gotten yet.

Time to move on, clearly, and come back to the last few details of the master as the bits and pieces arrive. But before we do, a quick update for those of you who have asked how the Cat is getting on with his new sink. Unfortunately, things haven't quite worked out as we'd planned.

I'm still fighting the Cat every morning for the faucet to brush my teeth, because apparently, the Cat doesn't want just any sink to drink out of in the morning... he only wants my sink. Sigh.

At least we can take some consolation in the fact that the other sink isn't a complete and total loss:

He sleeps in it.

Leaving the master bathroom to the Cat, we dragged our tools down the hall to start the demo on the hall bathroom. And boy, was it in need of demolishing. It was bad the day we moved in, but three years of use (the last ten months as the only bathroom upstairs) took it to a whole new level of gross:

We've never said much about the immediate prior owners of our house. It's always been much more fun to focus on Bad Joey and his Adventures In Remodeling, and after all, the immediate prior owners didn't really do much. No, strike that. They didn't do anything. Including clean the house. Ever.

So when we moved in, and started using the bathrooms and cleaning them regularly, it was clearly a bit of a shock to the poor things, and the substances holding them together started to disintigrate. We didn't mind that 30 years of grime disintigrated, but when the caulk, grout and mastic underneath it started to go as well, that was a bit more troubling. S'ok, though. We had roofing tape:

Please note, however, that this is an off-label use. We cannot officially recommend roofing tape for other than its primary purpose. Though we can say, as a single data point, roofing tape will stick mosaic tiles to a shower wall for approximately 28 months before adhesive failure.

The sauna's still attached to the bathroom, virtually untouched from three years ago, though we did use it to store spare toilet paper and cotton balls for a while:

As we noted when we first told you about the sauna, it was clearly a converted cedar closet. It didn't take super-duper, secret sleuth, Mad Spy Skillz to figure that out-- we just had to look up to see the clothes pole that was still installed:

Joey, Joey, Joey. What class. We won't actually demo the sauna this go-round though. We'll end up blocking the access to it when we finish the left side wall to the bathroom, but we'll tackle the sauna itself from the other side when we demo our daughter's closet and co-opt the sauna space to add a bathroom for her.

Demolition was straightforward-- couple of hammers, couple of crowbars, bolt cutters to get through the old pipe... pitch it all out the open window, and we're done:

Well we should say demolishing the walls was simple. The floor, however, was another matter.

We always kind of thought of this bathroom as the red-headed stepchild of the house, since it was just an unremarkable, garden-variety, 1970's ugly-- completely outshined in its pursuit of ugliness by the spectacularity (is that a word?) of the master bathroom's ugliness. The little ugly duckling found a way to emblazon itself in our minds, however, for it boasted the most layers of flooring of any room in the house we've had to demolish. Five layers, folks, FIVE. Two layers of underlayment, and three layers of vinyl flooring and tile.

Good thing, then, that the demolition on the bathroom floor actually started a while back. See, the top layer of flooring was comprised of old beige vinyl tile in 12 x 12 peel-n-stick squares. It was dull and a bit cruddy, but it appeared to be well-stuck to the floor, and we had soooo many other fish to fry in the renovation skillet, that we never really gave it a second thought.

Until one day, a couple of months ago, I walked into the bathroom, and a couple tiles were loose, and a bit askew. I kicked them back into place, stepped on them to press them down, and went on about my business. The next day, they were loose again, along with a few others. I did the same thing-- kicked them straight and stepped on them. The day after, even more tiles were loose. We were up to 8 or 10 of them by that time, and I was starting to get a bit concerned. I called the Kilted One upstairs, and showed him what was happening. He said he'd noticed it, too, and so the two of us got down on our hands and knees, and started looking for the cause. We were rapping the walls with our knuckles, looking for soft spots that might signal a leak, we were sniffing the floor, trying to determine if something had been spilled on it... we were looking everywhere.

At which point, our six year old daughter wanders into the doorway, sees both her parents crawling around the bathroom floor, sniffing and knocking, and understandably asks, "Mama? Papa? What'cha doing?"

We explained to her that we were trying to figure out what was making the tiles loose, and she immediately says, "I know!"

We looked at each other, and then at her. "You do?"

"Yup," says she, "the plunger!"

"The plunger?"

"Uh-huh! Wanna see?" Whereupon she promptly grabbed the plunger from behind the toilet, mushed it down right in the middle of one of the tiles, and with a great, squishing, sucking sound, lifted the plunger and popped the tile right off the floor.

Ooookay. So... "Have you been doing this all week, sweetie?"

"Yup! It's real easy. You want to see me do some more?"

No, no, that's quite alright. The Mystery of the Migrating Tiles was solved, and we didn't need our Mad Spy Skillz for that one, either.

Unfortunately, the rest of the floor took a great deal more effort than the vinyl tiles. In fact, for the first time in years, we broke out the roofing shovel:

Last time I wielded that thing was almost three years ago when we first moved in and were working on the dining room. The Kilted One really must like action shots of me with that roofing shovel, because as I review the dining room gallery entry, there's another one of me in there, doing the exact same thing. I suspect, however, that he just likes watching my butt. Anyway, whatever his photographic motivations, the roofing shovel, some elbow grease, and a little chick-hip action (the low center of gravity is the key) peeled away the layers of floor to expose the hardwoods. Which, surprisingly, won't be in bad shape once they've been exposed to a healthy dose of fresh air and sunlight to dry out.

Thus came the end of the demolition phase of the hall bath. Now you see it:

Now you see it again, just 12 feet lower, and in a few more pieces:

Hmm. Time for a dumpster.

Anyway, as we were discussing the weekend's work over dinner Sunday night, we realized that, with the demolition of this bathroom, our time with Bad Joey is slowly coming to an end. It's taken almost three years of steady work, but we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel-- the scourge of piecemeal framing, multiple layers of plastic and other man-made finish materials, and Electric Boogaloo aesthetic is diminishing. Don't be too depressed, though. We're quite sure the kitchen, though it's half-demolished already, will yield some choice Joey surprises, and the attic (which we will eventually finish into a third floor master suite) remains Joey-fied.

Still, the thought touched us with a bit of nostalgia, and so we put together a very brief Bad Joey Retrospective from this demolition, because it highlighted so much of what we've come to expect of Joey's work...

The studs that he hacked off and left hanging, with no other visible means of support...

The 12" lengths of board with at least 8 nails securing them to the floor...

And the random framing bits inserted in odd locations, for which we have no explanation other than he couldn't measure properly, couldn't cut accurately, and couldn't nail a board up straight to save his life...

Ahh, Joey... you might be long gone, retired to Florida and living large, but never fear... your craftsmanship is immortalized.

And finally, we finished up work not a moment too soon, because we got socked with 6" of thick, white fluffy snow. And once again, no matter how much aggro Joey causes us, we sit back for a moment, and remember why we live here:

March 8, 2005: Slow weekend around the house, but after the last six weeks or so of full-on work, we kind of needed it. After you tear out a bathroom, it's generally good practice to let the dust settle, take stock of what you've got, and make some plans.

We measured and mapped out the electrical and the rough-in for the plumbing on the hall bath, and finally managed to get out and make a supply run for some odds and ends we needed for the electrical, as well as that blasted mounting bracket for the master bathroom window treatment we've been promising to show you for two weeks now.

From the time we started planning the master bath renovations, we knew we'd have this window in the tub surround-- it was original to the house, and we weren't about to go through the hassle of boarding it up and replacing the siding on the outside. We have quite enough siding to replace already, thankyouverymuch, and we figure natural light? Is a good thing.

Of course, that means we now, for the first time, have other hassles: Window Coverings. Now, we live on 3 1/2 acres, and the lot's laid out privately and has a ton of trees, so for the last three years, we haven't had much, if anything, covering the windows in the house. And the few blinds we actually do have are all in the bedrooms upstairs, and are more to keep the morning sun out of the bedrooms rather than worrying about who's looking in. Really, unless Spiderman's started peeping in the neighborhood, we don't have much to worry about.

So it was kind of odd for us to actually have to think about what we were going to do to cover this window. Not covering it wasn't really an option-- the window's kind of at an odd angle to the road, so it's unlikely anyone would be looking, but still. We really don't want people seeing our pasty white rear ends in the shower. We don't want to scare them.

So we got creative, and came up with a window treatment that would work for what we wanted. Check it out:

Not that stained glass windows are unusual in a, you know, window, but we had to make a few modifications to make it work.

We found the stained glass window itself on Ebay, and took it out of the frame it was in. We constructed a new frame of 1x4 poplar, fronted the glass with a Lexan panel for safety, and dropped it into the frame. Then we backed the frame with another whole 1x4 poplar frame, essentially sandwiching the Lexan/glass between two individual frames, so that it is solid from both sides. We mounted a 1 by to the side of the window, and hinged the panel to it.

We made sure the hinges swung 180 degrees, so that we can swing the panel out of the way to tilt the windows in for cleaning, and also so that we can still enjoy the view out over the pasture while we're soaking in our tub:

And that's about it, for the window treatment and for this weekend's work. We decided to take advantage of the late season snowstorms and bagged Sunday at the house to hit the slopes. It was a blast, and you all need not worry-- we all arrived home with no broken bones. The renovation. Goes on.

March 21, 2005: Well, it's officially Spring at Brickman House, and those of you who've been with us for awhile know what that means:

Dumpster time!

Sigh. There are so many dirty little secrets of remodeling that no one tells you about. Especially not the "This Old House" crew, which has an unlimited budget via the checkbooks of its victim... err, homeowners, to strip absolutely everything off the outside of a house and replace it with new material, rebuild the framing because there's absolutely nothing about it worth saving though it managed to hold the house up for 100+ years already, then strip every single thing out of the inside of a house, replace it with new, and then present the dead broke homeowner with the keys to their newly-renovated "old house," which no longer has anything even remotely old in it but cost three times the amount it would have taken to tear down the old structure and rebuild the identical thing new. Or those dippy designers on the cable home makeover shows who ostensibly have a limited budget, but inexplicably have access to unlimited amounts of fibreboard to construct poorly-conceived cheap furniture and then slap piles of paint over everything.

Oh... oops. Are our frustrations with reality TV renovations showing? Anyway, back to dirty little secrets. See, when you renovate year round, somehow, piles end up places. Yes, Piles. You tear out a kitchen cabinet or two to make way for plumbing, and where do you put the junked kitchen cabinets? Why, in a pile somewhere around the property. Tear out a leaking laundry room window to install a new one, and where does it go? Yup, in a pile somewhere. Replace the well water holding tank because it's waterlogged and won'hold pressure, and where does it go? Uh-huh.

No one ever tells you about The Piles.

Which is why, once a year, we call up for a dumpster, and "spring cleaining" takes on a whole new meaning around our house. We cleared the pile of rubble that was the hall bathroom, as well as a bunch of other piles that somehow managed to accumulate around the property over the last year.

We also cleaned out and reorganized the garage, knowing that we'll soon be turning our attention outside to continue painting the house.

We got all that done in fairly short order, at which point we should have headed inside to continue working on the hall bathroom. But it was 65 degrees and sunny, and we were having too much fun being outside, so we decided to see what kind of trouble we could get into for the afternoon. With two chainsaws, a lawn tractor and a tow chain in our freshly organized garage, we didn't have to look far.

Since we were already at the garage, we decided to continue freeing it from the vegetation that's been eating it for years:

An hour later, we had this:

And since it was going so well, we decided to keep going, and clean up the patch of monster overgrown pine trees and brush to the right of the garage:

Wow-- what a difference. It's the first time in at least 30 years that particular patch of ground has seen sunlight. It's a bummer we don't have a "before" picture, but we got so chainsaw-happy, it was cleared and done before we even thought to grab the camera.

The weather drove us inside the next day, and so we were forced to wreak havoc inside. Unfortunately, our opportunities to channel our inner Texas Chainsaw Massacre tendencies are severely limited indoors, so there was no wild swinging of power tools, no dragging of huge hunks of wood via tractor, and no maniacal cackles of glee.

Bummer. We headed indoors to the hall bath, and did some minor reframing, ran most of the electric wiring, and installed the new window. Rather anti-climactic and boring, but hey... not every day involves flinging power tools about one's self:

Oh well, there's always next weekend!

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