Category: bathroom

rainy weekends

this is what happened 2 weekends ago. i’m not even going to try and give any excuses for why i’ve been so slow…

ductpipes

(left) me insulating mathew’s “squct”. (right) mathew outside making LOTS of noise cutting and removing old cast iron pipes.

nail pullerrain barrel

(left) one of my favorite tools: the nail puller. (right) one of mathew’s new tools: a rain barrel.

pipesduct

(left) mathew’s strange pipe garden collection in the garage. (right) the new “squct” is now much friendlier to mathew’s head/height.

mathewwainscoting

(left) for most of the afternoon i helped mathew install new pipes outside the house. it was raining but not pouring. sorry this photo is kind of dark, we work pretty late… (right) and when i wasn’t helping i was stripping wainscotting panels. these are done, although it’s probably hard to tell. next they’ll need sanding, filling and painting.

rain barrelrain barrel

we’ve been getting so much rain over the last few weeks. mathew finally attached the roof rain spout to the barrel. he was so excited when the rain started saturday night that he ran downstairs to check it but there wasn’t that much rain yet. by sunday morning it was full!

pipepipe

mathew cutting and hammering all that old rusty cast iron pipe, making it smaller to fit in the trash. what a big noisy mess he made! strange that you can just destroy cast iron with a hammer….

pipespipes

pipe photos mathew took. i don’t know if he was just documenting or wanting to describe something…

pipesducts

more pipes, and ducts. the plumbing and heating ducts are now done and the work can continue upstairs in the bathroom.

hello stranger!

soooo… it’s been a couple of weeks since our last post. two weekends ago we took some time off from the house.

misha & mathewmisha & mathew

i saw friends in the bay area while mathew was in new york visiting his brother, misha.

plumbingplumbing

last weekend: valentine’s day marked 15 years that mathew and i have been together. and how did we celebrate? with plumbing! i helped with cleaning and prepping recycled copper pipe, while mathew (left) added them to the bathroom plumbing. (right) i even sweated (soldered) my first joints! sorry, no action photos, i think mathew must have been supervising so that i didn’t burn anything… i was nervous but it was quite easy. and mathew says that none of my joints had leaks. yay!

ductduct

later mathew decided to take a perfectly good, round heating duct and make it rectangular. (left) he started by stomping on it. at that point i couldn’t figure out where he was going with it or how it would end up…

ductduct

but it’s mathew. so, of course it turned out just fine. (right) his finished “squct” (square+duct)!

janeenplumbing

(left) meanwhile i was putting insulation on hot water pipes. (right) and connecting cast iron pipes (heavy!) with rubber connectors and metal clamps.

drillingfir

(left) mathew drilling a hole in a fir joist below the bathroom, for a pipe to run through. (right) that circle cut from wood nearly 100 years old, smelled so amazing, like really sweet, warm pine. too bad you can’t smell it, all you get is this photo.

tapestore

(left) a heating duct connection that i sealed with aluminum tape. (right)) our recycled “plumbing store”! magically it always has exactly what we need, even the lengths are just about perfect.

doordoor

(left) on monday morning mathew was downstairs working on something that felt and sounded like an earthquake. i went downstairs and found him working on the double, sliding doors in my office. somehow he’d removed one side and was cleaning the track. (right) and i’m excited to introduce you to my new office door! sorry, i hadn’t removed the plastic film on the glass yet,… and the photo is blurry… but isn’t it pretty?

kitchenkitchen

while i sat in the kitchen, quietly cleaning tile for re-use, mathew came along and cut a hole in the floor. i have often mentioned his love of cutting holes in floors… this one is for a heating duct and will eventually have a register, hopefully a pretty one.

hingessquct

(left) it is exciting to know that the beautiful victorian hinges that came with the house (that were covered in gloopy paint) can be cleaned up and made to look like new again, thanks to a heat gun and a wire brush. (right) mathew’s squct installed!

all over the place

last weekend we spent all of our time in the downstairs bathroom. this weekend we worked in and around the bathroom and we had helpers.

dadmom

my dad was in the downstairs bedroom drilling holes in the wall for blow-in insulation. my mom and i were in the garage pulling nails from wood, then separating floor tile from particle board, saving any reusable tile to donate to Scrap.

mathewjaneen

mathew was in the bathroom cutting and pulling up floor boards and making tons of noise. i’m sure he was doing more than this but i don’t know exactly what he was doing. (maybe he’ll add to this.)

kitchendad

later my mom and i moved upstairs to sort through the blue wall tile that we’ll need to reuse and fill in the gaps in the bathroom. and my dad drilled more holes in the kitchen wall. the system is: you drill holes at the top between all the studs, then you drop a string down with a weight to find where the fire blocking horizontal wood pieces are, this is about half-way down the wall where the blow-in insulation would be stopped within the space, then you drill another hole below the fire blocking.

janeenjaneen

i spent most of sunday sanding the double-doors in the living room downstairs, first the large flat surfaces with the power sander and then the smaller and curving parts by hand. i spent about 5 or 6 hours on this.

joistjoist

mathew was working on moving and replacing joists below the bathroom. the previous owners had cut out parts of the joists: BAD. and the new layout of the bathroom causes the plumbing to move, so a couple joists needed to be repositioned.

vent prepducts

in the evening we moved on to heating ducts in the garage. the new bathroom layout means these will get moved around too. mathew is hoping something can be done so that the new ducts will NOT be the perfect height for hitting his head on…

ductstinman

mathew pulled apart all the pieces leading from the furnace to the bathroom and i scraped off the asbestos tape. (right) now we’ve got enough old and new parts for an interesting tinman…

total destruction OR plan A, B, C, D, etc.

it was a weekend full of bathroom demolition. our friend stef has offered to help with demo many times and we would have contacted her to help last weekend if we had known it would involve this much destruction…

wall tilefloor tile

(left) blue wall tiles, the covered about 75 % of the walls! (right) crazy, slippery, busy floor tiles. say goodbye to those!

doordoor

the weekend started with mathew cutting the closed off door from the bedroom to the bathroom.

doorwindow

(left) originally we had hoped the door would be a clean, easy opening and that the tub could stay in place. when the door was finally opened the shower wall obstructed about 1/4 of the door. and it is already a very narrow door by today’s standards… (right) mathew re-framing the original window opening where the old/new bathroom door was.

janeenfloor

(left) there are now lots of scary pieces of wood filled with tons of nails. pulling them makes our work space safer and we can reuse the wood. (right) mathew pulling up floor tile. he had a fast method: he pulled up a vertical and a horizontal line of tiles then with a circular saw, cut the plywood they are attached to (without disturbing the subfloor.) he then pulled up large pieces of plywood covered in tile. a lot of the tile is still useable and we might donate it to Scrap.

wallwall

(left) mathew removing the shower wall, where i have removed most of the tile. (right) wall removed, door unobstructed.

walljaneen

(left) mathew removed the gypboard on the left side to find a nice surprise: old plaster wall and panelled wainscoting. we were hoping to find the same wainscoting on the right side of the door. no such luck. (right) here i am cleaning up tile i’ve pulled off the walls. we need to fill in spaces around the shower and old window so i’m doing my best to salvage the old tile.

janeenmathew

chipping away at tile…

plansplan

mathew became obsessed with figuring out configurations for the bathroom. he really had his heart set on putting in a clawfoot tub, but i don’t think my grandmother would use it and our friend, bob (who has experience working with seniors and bathroom designs) recommended a shower with a removable seat. last night after taping a shower outline on the floor and moving around the vanity and toilet we decided on a layout, with a 47″ shower and minus the clawfoot tub.

bathroombathroom

the current state of the bathroom. (left) where the toilet and vanity will go. (right) where the shower will go. we’re not in love with the tile, it’s far from victorian, but it will save a lot of time and be much less wasteful to keep it, at least for the shower area.

last weekend

i’ve really been dragging my feet with making these posts…

doordoor

(left) last friday mathew planed the door so it would fit into the door frame, as the bears watched.

closetanaglypta

(left) the closets are now completed with drywall. (right) and the anaglypta gets some paint.

bathroombathroom

(left) a hole that shows the right side of the door that leads into the bathroom from the bedroom. the original owners had closed this door but left the door and frame on the bedroom side. (right) toilet removed.

mathewbathroom

(left) and next goes the sink and vanity. and the cabinets and mirrors.

tapingbottle

(left) all four closets now have drywall and taping done. we worked together in cutting and installing the drywall as well as taping with topping plaster. (right) morning sunlight streaming into the upstairs bedroom.

hope everyone had a good week!