Me and my bright ideas. (What a summer it was...part 2)

The main bath in our house has always been an issue. It really needs a complete redo, like down to the bare wall studs and floor joists. The problem is that such a job would leave us without a tub and shower for a time, and I'm just not inclined to deal with that. Plus, I am not equipped to design and build a new bathroom, so we'd have to go down the road with contractors and such. No fun. In any case, the bathroom has been serviceable as it is. After several tries I finally managed to fix all the leaking problems, and have become marginally good at caulking, which is more of an art that skill.

I could paint this. With a roller and gallon of Glidden. 

Sidebar: Anybody can caulk, just like anybody can paint. I can paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, just not like da Vinci. Of course, this is not to say that caulking a tub is like painting the Sistine Chapel, but the comparison fits I think. You can put enough caulk around a tub to make it stop leaking, but some art keeps it from looking like blown in insulation. The same applies to the bathroom, in general. I didn't want to just throw in new fixtures and be done with it. I wanted it to look nice too and was afraid that my skills ( or lack thereof ), didn't match my aspirations.

Then one recent day as I was shaving and becoming annoyed again by the worst sink on the planet, I made my decision. My next decision was even crazier that the first. I decided to march downstairs and announce my plans to Cindy. Before I knew what I was doing I told Cindy that the sink and toilet had to go, and I was replacing them both.

New toilet is in. Annoying sink is gone.

You would think after 30+ years of marriage, I would have learned my lesson by now. Once I announce any plans to Cindy, formal or informal, it's a go. There is no turning back. It's a good thing, in some ways, since I am a bit of a procrastinator, but it's bad in that I haven't always thought  things completely through before announcing them. Then the night sweats start until I can think of an escape route. By that I mean a way to get expert help, or at least some other layman that can say something like "no, turn it to the left!". More on that in an upcoming blog.

It actually started with the toilet. It always had a tendency to clog, and recently seemed like there was some sewer gas leaking out. This meant that there was likely a gap in the wax seal, or some other more serious fault. If you are going to remove the toilet to replace the seal, and the thing doesn't work all that great anyway, you might as well get a new one. Then there's that ridiculous sink. They really spared every expense when they bought it. It was a small, single sink with no room to put anything down. So if you set down your razor or toothbrush, it would invariably slide into the bottom of the sink.

Replacing a toilet is actually pretty easy. There's the wax seal, a couple of bolts that secure it to the floor, then a water hookup. Selecting a toilet is a different matter. I've never really looked at them before and was amazed at the selection. Do we really need this many choices in toilets? Anyway, we ended up with an American Standard toilet that claims you can flush a bucket of golf balls. That should do.

Oops. 

SO toilet installation almost always starts with toilet removal, which is neither pleasant nor easy. All the bolts on the old toilet were rusted. Normally, you remove the tank then remove the bowl, but with the rusted bolts, they were locked in an ugly embrace. The floor bolts were rusted too, but I managed to break them off. Then Cindy and I had the wonderful job of carrying the icky assembly down the stairs and to the curb, without gouging a wall or making a mess. We did it without arguing. Amazing.

Finshed! Halloween decorations by Cindy. 

The new installation was easy. New bracket, seal, and hook up the water. A couple test flushes and no leaks! A rare accomplishment for this very amateur plumber.

Next came the vanity. After MUCH deliberation, we ended up with a 36" vanity with a manufactured marble top. The manufactured marble has an integrated back splash. I loved the real marble but didn't want to deal with gluing the back splash to the wall. Anyhow, the main difficulty was that we needed to "off-center" the vanity to have reasonable clearance from the toilet, which meant there would need to be some creative plumbing.

So other than the offset, the vanity installation was pretty straightforward. The wall and floor were not square, of course, so I attached quarter inch shims to the front of the vanity, then attached it to the wall with two inch wood screws. Then I caulked the top and sides of the back splash and it was done. Miraculously, no leaks once again.

We really love our new bathroom and it turned out to be one of my nicest improvements to date. We still have the old pink tub, but I did fix the enclosure, add a new rainfall shower head and update the faucets so it's not all that bad. It's behind a shower curtain anyway so you really don't even see it.

Well that's it for Part 2. Next blog will continue the summer projects including a problematic half bath update, finally painting a door, and the final work done on our chimney.

What a summer it was...Part 1.

Not that we did anything real exciting, but actual progress was made on several home projects. There was a price to be paid of course, and that price was the loss of a week or more of laying by a pool, eating and drinking too much. It was a fair trade however, because my lovely bride is quite happy with the progress, and our home is looking that much nicer.

Repainted porch. First do over.

There is so much to write about, I'm going to have to this in at least two parts. When I last blogged, I wrote about First Brother-In-Law Randy showing up and creating a whirlwind of brush clean up and grass planting. Little did I know that he set the pace for projects through the summer. First on the list was repainting of the porch floor, the first redo of any projects. The floor had become worn and chipped, especially near the door and on the steps. I hope this is due to the poor condition of it when I first painted, and not a job I'll have to do every three years. I hope this coat lasts longer.

Nifty location of outlet and transformer.
Looking at this reminds me to stow those
wires properly. 

Next was a major project was something I had put off for over a year. As a house "Christmas Present", we purchased outdoor lighting. I was dragging my feet on this one for a couple reasons, first was that I have no outdoor power outlets at the house. Upon reading the instructions, they want you to plug the system into a GFI outlet. When we purchased the house, we had an electrician check every outlet, and bypass the old knob and tube wiring. For reasons that are unclear to me, they also installed a GFI outlet in the basement, I think to compensate for a lack of grounded outlets through the house. Anyway, the first step was to tap into that outlet, and run power outside the house.

This brings us to the other reason why I put off the job.

Back garden lights.

Having a house with masonry construction is both a blessing and a curse. One foot thick concrete walls are definitely a curse when you are looking for was to install things outside the house. I finally decided to drill through the frame of one of the basement windows and install the outlet on the casement. This will prevent the window from opening, but I don't care.

Side house lights

Next I had to install the transformer, a rather large box that converts the power and controls the lights by timer and sensor. After that, it was time to position the lights and run the power cord. Immediately adjacent to the driveway is a concrete walk the abuts the house. Luckily there was a small gap between the house and the walk with just enough room to run the cabling. The first cable runs to the back of the house, lighting the driveway and flower bed out to the little storage area. If we ever fix the other flower bed, I left enough cable to go further.

Front walk lights and spot for flag

The other line ran down the driveway to the front of the house. We purchased these narrow little lights that I managed to install at the seams in the sidewalk, right next to the house. Further down, I dug a trench and installed two more standard lamps along the walk to the street. We also purchased a spotlight to illuminate our flag at night. This will replace the solar powered spotlight that actually worked pretty well, but didn't hold up in the long, dark winter nights.

That's it for now. The next blog will document a moment of insanity, leading to my biggest project ever.