Journey to the Belly of the Bathroom

This should be very exciting for you. I shall be taking you on a journey to the crawl space below the bathroom to give you an idea of where I have been working.

The Door to the Belly

The Stairs to the Belly

The Hole to the Belly

The Belly

Oops! 

The Belly of the Bathroom

As you can see, it's a tight little space.

But it looks to me like the flange is sitting in the hole I've made. That means I can secure it to the wall and floor and get about to replacing the cement board.

6:18 PM: What you are looking at is a shower pan that is (more or less) attached to the wall. I shall now continue to the next step in the process.....if someone can tell me what that is.

Craftsmanship and Me, I mean...I

Once again, my desire to be a precision craftsman has bit me in the ass.

The shower pan is not setting properly because the flange that attaches the pipe to the drain is larger than the hole I cut in the floor. 

I have slid a couple of 2x4's under the shower pan to lift it off the floor as high as I can. My plan is to crawl under the house with my sawsall and enlarge the hole from underneath. The reason I must do this is because we have glued the drain pipe to the drain flange and so, the shower pan is not going anywhere.

I shall report on my progress in the next paragraph.

Here we are at the next paragraph and a few hours have passed. I think I am successful with my shower pan project but I won't know until tomorrow.  That's when I will crawl back under the house and inspect the hole I've been trying to make bigger. As for crawling in and doing the inspection today...I'm done! I'm old, I'm sore and I have bad knees. Inspection can wait until tomorrow.

I have been working in a very confined space, made smaller by electrical wire and water lines running through my work space.

I started with my sawsall but it was too big to fit in the space. Next I brought the drill down, hoping to make some holes that I can fit my jigsaw blade through. 

The jigsaw kind of worked but I couldn't maneuver it very well and I simply could not make it move into a couple of spots. So, back to the drill and drilling a series of holes.

The shower pan appears to be laying flat but a good inspection from below will let me know how that flange is sitting...and hopefully be done...and able to move on to the next project.

All of this fallderall could have been avoided by making the hole big enough at the start when I had easy access to it.

Shower Pan

We have finally gotten to the point where we were able to place the shower pan.

 As of this morning, it's not quite right yet. But it is attached to the drain pipe, which has been a battle for a few weeks now. 

Part of the problem with the picture above is that it is on it's side and none of the water is going to go down the drain that way.

There! That's better.

We still have some minor placement issues to deal with, but I hope to have them resolved this weekend, perhaps even by this evening.

The we can move on to the next issue; Wainscoting!

Quirky Floor

Just a quickie post and a picture of the floor after it has been cleaned off. We still need to add more grout and even the whole thing out.

One of the things we've noticed is that the green tiles are slightly higher than the white tiles. I thought that was the case but I thought it was negligible. 

Well, you can feel it when you walk on it. It's subtle but it's there.

At least we have our floor the way we want it despite the constraints that the flooring industry "Man" tried to oppress us with.

Grout Day

My close personal friend, Ron the Tile Guy came by today and performed some grouting duty. (I probably shouldn't call it duty when we are working in the bathroom, but I believe the other one is spelled "dooty") At this point, it's hard to tell how it looks because it's still smeared with grout over the top.

Nonetheless, it's another step closer to a working bathroom. Next up, we are going to have to go shopping for the wainscoting boards and the shower tile.

Also, we still have to select and purchase the light fixtures and the medicine cabinet.

The other thing I'm starting to think about is how I'm going to get the bath tub into the bathroom. It's going to take some major muscle which to me means bodys.

I'm think of putting up a sign up sheet at work and request the big strong brawny boys out back to come to the house for pizza and beer and then, when they show up, spring the bath tub on them.

Accent Tile Victory

It still doesn't come out in the pictures but by light of day, the green accent tiles do look green.

After I stopped tiling last night and sat and relaxed, my body tightened up. I got up to go to bed and could hardly move. I'm still pretty stiff this morning but once I got up and got to moving around, I loosened up.

I had to take the cats in to the Vet today for their annual check up and shots. Oscar has gingivitis and Willy has lost a couple of pounds.

Now I'm back and it is time to get back to tiling. I'm going to get that finished today!

12:05 PM: V I C T O R Y ! ! !

I have finished the tiling. Shown above is the last tile. Me Am Happiness!

Now, before I rest on my laurels, I need to get to work on the shower and fix the hardie backer problem with the shower pan.

It's about four o'clock now and I have solved the shower pan dilemma. My original plan was to cut off the bottom part of the hardie backer rather than remove the whole board. Well, hardie backer is...um....hearty. My Dremmel Trim Saw wouldn't cut through it. And the blade on my skill saw was not up to cutting through either.

So, I just removed the boards.

Once I got the boards off, the shower pan slide right in to place. The drain was still a little cockeyed so I had to cut a bigger hole around the drain pipe. Again, I thought I was being so crafty cutting a nice tight hole for the drain pipe. Instead, it just screws with me down the road.

Therefore, the lesson is, in areas where it doesn't matter ascetically, give yourself plenty of room. Stop trying to be such a prima donna.

Now the shower pan fits in place nicely and I am happy for the moment. I am kind of concerned about the height of that drain though. It seems like it should fit tighter to the drain pan.

The Worlds Easiest Puzzle

It's a little before ten on a rainy Friday night and I'm taking a break from my tiling duties to stop sweating. 

I suppose I should be wondering why I'm sweating whilst doing a relatively simple job on my knees that involves nothing more than a caulking gun and placing little tiles into the proper spaces. I'm essentially doing the worlds easiest 100 square foot puzzle.

However, it is hard to be hunched over for that length of time doing that tedious work. It's a good thing that I am my own general contractor otherwise I would have fired my whiny, wimpy ass a long time ago.

I've covered some good ground and I'm going to keep going until Susan comes home from the concert she's working tonight.

Here's all I have left to do. It really doesn't look like all that much. For the record, I did a rough calculation and it comes out to 899 tiles.

It is now 11:11:37 PM PDT and I am finished for the evening. I have about 240 tiles left to place and they can wait until tomorrow.

I am very very close!

Highlight Tile Hightlights

I have spoken with my plumber and he informs me that the Hardie Backer needs to be outside the lip of the shower pan.

So, I am going to cut the Hardie Backer about a foot above the lip of the shower pan. Then I will cut it to the proper height, place the shower (hopefully) where it belongs and matches up nicely with the drain pipe and replace the Hardie Backer so it fits behind that lip and creates a nice solid water proof barrier.

It's another case of two steps forward and one step back that appears to be my construction modus operandi.

I spent about two hours tonight placing highlight tiles in the bathroom. The process is to squirt a little adhesive caulking into the tile space and then place the tile into the space, making an effort to center it as best you can.

I devoted about two hours to the job but I know I didn't work for two solid hours. It's very hard on my knees and back. So I squirt caulk into a section of tile, place the tile into the spaces with caulk and then take a five or ten or 20 minute break.

I got almost to half way before quitting for the evening at 9PM.

The unfortunate thing is that now that there is a substantial number of the green highlight tiles in place, they look black more than green. I'm hoping that will change when we get the final lighting fixtures in there to brighten the place up.

Tiling - Day Two Again Once More

My close personal friend, Ron finished the bathroom tiling today and it.....looks.....marvelous!

Now all that is left is to glue the green highlight tiles into place. I'll probably start that process tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are more pictures.

I'm very happy with the look at the entry. I love the symmetry of green tile at either side of the door.

The green highlight tiles shown above have not been glued into place yet. We just set them there and I love the way they look. I can't wait to get the whole thing complete.

It is amazing how large and bright the room looks now. I imagine that will go away once we start installing fixtures.

Tiling Day

I got out of bed at se7en this morning. I was thrilled to sleep in an extra hour and a half. I got dressed, had a nice breakfast and started to get the bathroom ready for Tiling Day.

My tile guy, who is also my close, personal friend Ron, was scheduled to show up at nine. I had to pick up all the protective cardboard that was down on the floor and retrieve the shower pan from wherever the hell I put it many months ago. Fortunately, the shower pan was right where I thought I had left it.

I hauled it into the house and BAM! Right off the bat, I hit a roadblock.

The shower drain does not match the drain hole in the shower pan, by about two inches. I thought it was going to keep us from laying the tile and setting the shower pan. It turns out we do not have to set the shower pan today. I need to contact the plumber and figure out what to do.

So we're okay.

My close personal friend, Ron showed up at the appointed time and we proceeded to get down to business. We had to put down some self leveling compound to even out a couple of areas.

Once we got to actually placing the tile, things went pretty quick.

At the start, we thought we would place the green highlight tiles as we went. They would not set up to the mortar very well so we decided to add them later and glue them in place with silicone.

You might notice that there is a row of improperly placed tile in the picture above. Don't panic! We fixed it.

We (my close personal friend, Ron) ended up working until about 4:00. We did not finish. We had a ways to go. 

Ron elected to return tomorrow and finish things up.

I'm very anxious to fire up the heated floor and feel the warm tile beneath my feet but I have to wait until everything has had a chance to dry.

Super Bowl Hot Tub Sunday

We are sitting here at the very start of Downton Abbey after having enjoyed Super Bowl L, with what Susan and I consider a satisfactory story book ending to a wonderful season.

The Denver Bronco's beat the Carolina Panther's, ruining their perfect season. I am happy with the outcome because I wanted to see Peyton Manning get another Championship ring before his retirement, which I think he will be announcing soon.

I walked over to the Hub to watch the game and Susan joined me just before halftime, after having worked the Monster Truck Rally all weekend.

I beat the crap out of my hands while working in the bathroom this weekend. I'm all bandaged up. I was cutting Hardie Backer with a dull blade on my jigsaw and when I grabbed it to replace it, it burned my finger. Then I banged up my fingers throughout the day just doing stuff.

We got in the hot tub tonight for the first time in months. It was nice and made me wonder why we have been avoiding it.

I think I'm all set for the morning. Ron will be here at nine and the tiling shall commence.

Yea!

Bathroom Follies

I think I'm ready for "Tile Day"!

I spent a good portion of the day putting up two pieces of Hardie Backer.* There is no good reason for the giant slowness of my pace...other than my lack of experience and ability. It just took a lot of measuring and re-measuring and measuring two more times to get the panels to fit.

But they are in and I am happy.

I still have a small amount of dry walling to finish around the area of my future cabinet. I'm going to try and do a little of that work tomorrow but I also have plans to walk over to the Hub Tavern and watch Super Bowl Fitty.

Here are some pictures.

*Side Note: I have heard Cement Board refered to as Cement Board, Wonder Board and Hardie Backer. I have finally decided to refer to it as Hardie Backer. It is the brand name I am using and they have a website that has been most helpful to me.

Four Days to Tiling

I completed my task with the Cement Board in the bathroom. I need to go over to the Depot at lunch and get some supplies for taping and mudding the cement board.

I'm getting excited for the big tile day coming up. It gets us one step closer to a working bathroom. I really want to get that bath tub in place.

After the tile, the next step is Wainscoting. Once that is in and painted, we can install the sink, toilet AND bath. 

We woke up to snow this morning. I went out and shoveled for 15 minutes and cleared my steps, front walk and sidewalk. I didn't think it was worth it to break out the snow blower for an inch of snow that will be melted by noon.

But I still want to use my snow blower some more so let's keep going with the snow.

Five Daze

Last night we completed removing the tiles from our tile sheets. Now they are ready to receive the accent tile when we start tiling in
. . . . . FIVE DAYS!

I still have to get back in and remove a piece of cement board. I thought I was being a real precision craftsman when I cut the hole for the shower faucet. It turns out it needs to be a lot larger in order to accept the flange that goes around the handle.

The snow is all gone. The forecast today is predicting snow but nothing like what we got back in December. I still want to do some snow blowing so I'm hoping for a couple more snow substantial snowfalls.