Dining rooms...not just for dining

A survey of the wallpapers in the bathroom

and WTF is this? My friend Erin says is a pterodactyl.

I think she's on to something:

Found dinosaur in backyard

Landscape lighting installed in backyard

Anyone need snake food?

The other day I was loading up more aluminum siding to take to the scrap yard when a rat scurried across my boots. She darted to a hole under the woodshed where the floor had caved in. I'll take care of this, I thought to myself, stuffing a "special dinner" packet in the hole for her supper.

A few days later, after determining that my guests would appreciate some privacy in the restroom, I went to fetch the bathroom door out of the woodshed. The door was crammed all the way in the back of the shed. Noting the 25 pound bag of seeds that some critter had been munching on, I decided to clean it up as I worked my way through all the clutter. Clearly, she had been merrily feasting on the seeds, which I'd intended to use to attract red crested cardinals to the garden. 

I moved aside some leftover batt insulation that I'd found up for grabs at a construction site and started scopping up the leftover shells with a dustpan. I had half-emptied the dustpan into a garbage can when suddenly I felt something plop down into the garbage can. That's when the squeaking started. 

Glancing around to find the source of this noisy ruckus, I spotted 3 baby rats nestled on the floor in a pile of insulation and seeds. The 3 babies were teeny tiny, so young that I could see their little hearts beating beneath their hairless bodies. I gently pushed them onto the dustpan and set them out on the garden table, then went to fetch the fourth that I'd accidentally dropped into the trash can.

But wait! There were more!

Plugged up in the shop vac detailer attachment

Ever since I vacuumed out the baby socks and chicken bones from my bathroom wall, the detail attachment for my shop-vac has been plugged up with something. I finally pulled out some needle nose tweezers to go hunt for the offending matter.

It wasn't long before I excitingly shouted out a "WOAH! WAY COOL!" having discovered this little guy's skull lodged in there:

He's tiny—about the size of an index fingernail

Mystery of the day

Why was this section of hardwoods cut out?

For a vent? Possible, but it's 3x longer  than any other floor vents I've found

Wood rot? Seems unlikely, since that usually travels along the grain of the wood faster than horizontally, from one piece to another

For a room divider? Definitely a possibility. Maybe there was a wall there.

Wait. That's definitely it.
There used to be a wall there.
35 inches over is another cut area of hardwoods.
The same size as a door opening.
Brilliant!

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Kobalt vs Husky

After testing out various tools made by Kobalt (sold at Lowe's) and Husky (sold at Home Depot), I've determined that the Kobalt brand is a much better product. Shown below is a Husky scraper that I used once verses a Kobalt scraper that I used for months to scrape adhesive paper and felt goo off the wood floors. 

Ironwork removed

Looks so much more inviting!

See the before/afters of the progress on the exterior

How to connect PEX to PVC for cheap

Sure, you can use a sharkbite fitting, but they're kind of a pain in the butt and they're expensive. For less than a third the cost, you can use plastic fittings that work just as well.

Here I was connecting ½" PVC to ½" PEX. The black piece is a ¾" to ½" MNPT with teflon-taped threads. You can find this piece in the PEX section of the hardware store. The white piece is a PVC coupling with one threaded and one unthreaded end, which can be found in the PVC section.

#HackOfTheDay

When you can't figure out how to connect your supply lines, there's always the alternative...

How to secure clawfoot tub feet using turnbuckles

Once we'd moved the clawfoot tub into the bathroom, I realized that the feet needed some reinforcement to reliably secure them onto the tub. The internet was of little to no help with this dilemma, so I called up Kevin Galloway of Galloway Porcelein who had assisted with restoring the tub. He had a brilliant solution—secure the feet using turnbuckles.

I set off to Home Depot and found them on the screws aisle: 2 turnbuckles with eyes at both ends, and 2 turnbuckles with an eye on one end and a hook on the other. I also picked up 4 washers that were just slightly larger than the eye opening on the turnbuckles. If you decide to go this route, make sure to know the distance between the feet and also take along one of the foot bolts so that you can ensure they fit snuggly onto the washers and turnbuckle eyes.

Here's an example of this same method Jason and Reilly's Remodel blog.

Bathroom Progress

and yes. my bathroom has a bow-tie
: )

Replumbed the entire house!

The Gamble House

Excellent! A documentary about Greene and Greene, pioneers of the American Arts & Crafts movement!

Baby socks and bones

Not sure if it gets any weirder than finding old baby socks and bones in your bathroom wall.

A number of guests had mentioned that the house smelled kind of funny when they were standing in the hallway. Since the bathroom was already torn up I decided to get to the bottom of this 'old smell' and stuck my shop vac attachment up into the wall. Turns out, someone a long time ago had insulated it with old linens, curtains, burlap wallpaper, and baby socks. Then, some sort of rodent came along and made a nest in there, filling it with twigs, pecans, and garbage scraps.

While cleaning this out, the detail attachment of my shop-vac got clogged up.  What came out was really cool...

How to connect ½" PEX to ½" galvanized pipe

This was my friend Tommy's brilliant idea to help me connect a PEX cold-water supply line to my garden hose spigot. Much of it depends on the size of the lines you are joining. Here, we were connecting ½" galvanized pipe to ½" PEX. From left, we used:

• a ¾" to ½" galvanized reducer, 
• a ¾" coupler with teflon taped threads, and 
• a ¾" to ½" PEX something-or-other

Worked like a charm.

Part II: She demanded a toilet

I was planning on renovating the bathroom after I finished painting the exterior.
but no, the bungalow gods had other plans for me....
...and my best friend Renee....who was scheduled to arrive in town in 3 days.

She demanded a toilet.

So on new year's eve, realizing that I had not a clue about how to plumb a bathroom, I called on my friend Tommy for immediate assistance. He knows a lot about plumbing, though there was a little wrench in the plan. We now had only 2 days to complete the project. 

So I took off on vacation a day earlier than planned and we got to work. If I was going to re-do the bathroom plumbing, I figured we might as well get that clawfoot tub installed.

To install the clawfoot tub, the toilet had to be moved, and
to replace the old pipes, the floor had to be removed,
which meant the shower and the sink had to be demo'ed out.
To remove the floor, the drywall had to be removed,
to remove the drywall, the beadboard had to be torn off, and
to remove the beadboard, the baseboards had to be removed.

You see where I'm going with this. 
Now my bathroom looked like this:



The floor presented an issue. A 1 day setback to be exact. This too was unexpected.
We discovered that there was concrete backer-board over not just 1, but 2 layers of subfloor.

The first layer was screwed to the second layer,
which was screwed and nailed to the joists.
and most of the screws were unrecognizably corroded and stripped, so the floor came up in pieces,
with me under the house, and Tommy above with the reciprocating and circular saws:
"ok, you can cut 3 inches to the right" (Tommy starts the cut) "
Good, good, now stop! There's a gas line there!" (he stops)
"go 2 inches to the left"
and so on and so forth. Piece by piece, we worked that subfloor up, occasionally shouting "I got one!" every time one of us worked a screw loose.

So now we had 1 day to re-do the plumbing.

I decided to treat this like a law school exam.
With a marker in hand I wrote on the wall:

by 4:00 - plumbing completed
by 4:30 - floorboards cut
by 4:45 - floor installed
by 5:00 - toilet installed
by 5:30 - leave to pick up Renee at the airport

and just to demonstrate how tight we were on time:



We did manage to stick to the timeline, except there was one wrench in the plan:
the toilet was positioned directly over the old cast iron sewer stack
which meant the flange was sticking up too high.
4 inches above the floor to be exact.

We now had 2 minutes to build a pedestal for the toilet to rest on:

ta-da!

Part I: The unexpected bathroom renovation

For those of you who are wondering why my posts have been sporadic lately:

I was sidetracked by another project.
You see, my shower drain broke.
and not just broke, like a miniscule leak or something minor, no.
It fell through the floor.

One morning, while I was showering, I accidentally stepped on the 'no-no zone'—
that questionable circle in the middle of the shower floor that I've avoided stepping on for over a year.
But not that morning.
No, my foot must have had a mind of it's own, because it landed smack-dab on top of the drain with all my weight behind it.

and that was when the drain pipe dropped through the floor, taking my heel along with it.

So there I was, naked, wet, and bleeding with my foot lodged partway between the bathroom and the crawlspace. Plastic shower pans apparently double as razor blades.

and better yet, I had a meeting that morning, which meant a long (long) trek across the med center. When the back of your heel is sliced open, every footstep causes it to crack open and bleed more, especially when your speed-walking to a meeting, because your neighborhood was surrounded by stopped trains and your house has 30 keys—2 for each door— all which look exactly the same and none of which work very well in the first place.

Back home that afternoon, I crawled under the house to investigate, having decided that we better fix this lickity-ding-dong-split otherwise I'd be showering under a pizza pan with a garden hose over it again. Did I mention it was 36 degrees outside? I've paid my dues—the pizza pan was not a solution this time.

'Easy,' I thought, 'it's just a shower drain. Let's just go secure that thing back into place.'

But of course, in a comedy of errors, I ended up trapped in a tangled web of 50 year old galvanized pipes. 

I'm a pretty limber guy with a small stature, yet there was no way I could limbo through that mess of pipes to reach the shower drain. 

The only way to repair the shower drain was to either a) tear the floor out, or b) remove and replace the pipes.

Those of you who have worked with jungle jims of corroded, old, galvanized pipe know where I'm going with this. The solution was to tear the floor out so that the old pipes could more easily be replaced.

This seemingly minor inconvenience had turned into an unexpected, immediate bathroom renovation. 

(to be continued in Part II: She demanded a toilet)

Scorch marks

My water heater was threatening to burn down the house. Here's what the inside walls of the shed looked like when I disassembled it to hook up the new plumbing:

So out with the 20-year-old torcher:

I stripped the copper out of it, then set it out on the curb for free pickings. 5 minutes later it was gone.

Installed a brand new, larger water heater that works like a champ. No more bubbles and squeaks, no more fire threat, hot water instantaneously...lovin' it!

Living room comfort

Termites are bad

Blocked and rotted sewer vent

Well this explains why the sewer drain cleanout was left open. The old cast iron sewer vent that runs up the wall and through the roof has a 2' section that is completely rotted out. The previous owner had left the cleanout open to allow venting for the plumbing, since this pipe was blocked with debris, Not to mention it has a large gaping hole down the side of it. This will need to be repaired since the cleanout not only leeches nasty, smelly sewer gases, but also could cause a sewage backup under the house.

Houston...

...the toilet flange is flush with the floor.
We are ready for lift-off.

Not sure if snake or lizard???

Ninjas

They dance on trees.

How to join PVC to galvanized pipe

Ok, somewhat of a hack, but it worked alright in most places. Some of the connections leaked a drop occassionally. At some point I became fed up with the old galvanized pipe and just ripped it all out and started fresh with PEX, which I ended up being much happier with.

How to connect 2 pieces of galvanized pipe when the threads are stripped

Here we had a dilemma. The new bathroom plumbing was all ready to go but the galvanized hot water supply line was in bad shape. The threads at the connection end were badly corroded and stripped, and the pipe would not budge when we tried to remove it. I set off to Home Depot and asked the plumber lady what we could do to hack this into working. She suggested using 2 galvanized compression couplings. Unfortunately, the only couplings in stock at Home Depot were too large (pictured) but I was able to find ½" compression couplings at my local plumbing supply store. They worked great. In the end though, I ripped out all the galvanized pipes, returned all the parts, and started fresh with PEX, which I ought to have just done in the first place.

Assessing the bathroom plumbing

My friend Tommy was probably thinking 'what the hell am I going to do about this mess?'

Frank Lloyd Wright Magazine Rack

Check out what my family gave me for Christmas! It sure looks sharp next to those beautiful hardwoods!

Did you hear that? My magazine rack is sexy  :P

We're going to have to do something about this...

 

History of Eastwood Homes

Learn about the fascinating history of the Arts & Crafts, Foursquare and Mission homes in Eastwood in this handy walking tour guide that the Eastwood Civic Association put together. Many of the houses in my neighborhood were built for Houston's most notable business leaders.

Electrical Cord Hack

I guess if you're going to hack 2 extension cords together, then this is the way to do it. (each wire separately taped. This was the extension cord that ran from the roof, along the house, behind the circuit breaker, over the roof of the shed, and up the pecan tree to the fluorescent light attached to a plywood nook in the backyard.

Seriously need a leafblower

Would you like to help me rake leaves...

leaves....

and more leaves?

Old tar paper label

Kinda neat. This was the underlayment below the asbestos shingles. Happened to run across an old product sticker near the circuit breaker. some of the old tar papers were made with an asbestos compound, but I think this one was made with asphalt.

New workboots

After wearing through 3 pairs of Asics, I decided that it was finally time to give in and buy a pair of quality (a.k.a. expensive) workboots. I trekked out to Academy, Northern Tool, and finally Cavender's Boot City to find a pair that 'worked.' Luckily, the saleslady at Cavender's pointed me to these awesome boots, Rocky Ironclads, and I couldn't be happier with the purchase. They are composite steel toe, which means they're lighter than traditional steel-toe boots, they're waterproof, oilproof, and best of all, electrical hazard rated.

Kitty says 'hi' by the way

The Duke of La Chimenea

Male carpenter bees have the biggest egos. There is one living near the top of the chimney who has taken to buzzing around me aggressively while I'm up on the ladder painting. The males don't have stingers, but are quite annoying, so I have given him a name:

The Duke of La Chimenea, who buzzes in man's ear when man is near

Once I spot the females nest, I'm going to suck him up in the shop-vac, where he will never be heard from again.

Free come get it

I've got plenty of asbestos shingles to spare if anyone needs any.

Finally painting

Sherwin Williams, Historical Collection, Rookwood Blue Green