plumbing

Some DIYer I turned out to be

Submitted by Steve on Sat, 01/16/2010 - 10:26pm
During the heating season -- from late October until April -- I run a large humidifier 24/7. It's something I've done since music school. I had a 115 year-old Czech flat-back double bass that didn't like steam heat. By the time spring arrived I would have spent anywhere from $300 to $1000 at the luthier getting glue joints fixed, new cracks repaired, the sound post reset and so forth. Running a big honkin' humidifier was a lot cheaper and the bonus was learning that it was healthier for people too.

The humidifier, a six gallon Bemis, is located in the kitchen extension where it's close to water and where the noise is less annoying. When I walked into the kitchen to feed the dogs yesterday morning, something was missing. It was quiet. Normally that means the humidifier tanks need refilling, but I'd just done that the night before.

I checked the unit and there was no sign of power. I pulled out the heavy breakfront to get to the wall outlet, forgetting about large bottle of VSOP on top. It shattered on the floor, showering my pants in brandy. After a quick clean-up and clothing change, I checked the plug with the first thing I found: my cordless phone charger. There was no juice at the outlet. Or at the next one either. Hmmm, a blown breaker?

The basement breaker panel looked fine. Nothing tripped. Aha! That circuit is downstream of a GFI exterior outlet on the back porch. Sure enough, it had tripped. I reset the GFI and the circuit, and humidifier, popped back to life. I climbed the stairs to my office/mushroom cave, self-satisfied that I'd fixed a problem that would have driven a lesser man to call an electrician.

An hour later, I went back to the kitchen for a coffee refill and saw that the humidifier was dead again. Drat, that probably means a bad GFI. Oh well, I can handle that too. But when I reset the GFI this time, the circuit was still down. Huh?


The Basement


The basement was, well, a basement. Besides the obvious, the concrete floor had worn away to dirt in several places, there was evidence of severe termite infestation and the main beam had a serious looking crack. After adding a lally column for temporary support, the basement was so filled with obstructions that it would have been almost impossible to make it a functional living space (or in my case, a functional shop).

Click on any picture to expand it
The seller’s cousin shows me around the basement storage room. Note the crack in the main beam over his head. Another less obvious problem, including one missed by two termite inspectors, was the colony feeding on the joists underneath that funky old drywall.


The first order of business was three days of gutting. The basement was littered with partition walls built from odds and ends apparently found on garbage pickup day. The stairway, or what was left of it by the termites, came down with a couple of well placed cuts of a Sawzall. Take a look at the angle on the john in the back. Guess where else those varmints hit. The next job was to rip up the concrete floor. As it was so thin and cracked, this was actually pretty easy. A sledge hammer, a crowbar and some strong backs were all that was needed. And a twenty cubic yard dumpster.

Since this was the perfect time to replace the hundred year-old plumbing, trenches were dug and new no-hub was run and plumbing roughed in for a downstairs bath. It was easy work for me because I left these two jobs to licensed contractors. Hey, I pick my battles.

I originally wanted to drop the finished floor six inches but a laser level put that idea to rest. The existing floor was waaaay out of level. To do so would have meant having to re-pitch all the plumbing underneath. So I settled on removing eight inches of dirt at the back and two at the front.

The upstairs waste pipe was also removed. It will be doglegged against the back wall at tie-in to remove yet another basement obstruction. 		With a great deal of angst but the assurance of an engineer who said that it existed mainly to take the bounce out of the upstairs floors, the main beam and posts were carefully removed in order to get a clean 3500psi concrete pour.

This really wasn’t the way to do it. While the house didn’t collapse, the upstairs plaster took a beating from it. It took a roll of mesh tape and three days of plastering to fix the hairline cracks.
While the concrete cured, I went back to my dining room shop and began constructing treads and risers for the new basement stairs. A $1300 termite extermination gave me some assurance that this one wouldn’t suffer the same fate in the near future I got this much done in a day, thanks to a way cool stair tread system I saw on one of the home shows, Easy Riser. The hardest part was finding them. I eventually located a box in Indiana for $70. The treads were mounted temporarily while I finished the risers. A couple of scraps of 1/2" birch plywood served as a skirt board.
The steam heat pipes, water, gas and most electrical have been relocated to the central soffet, next to the new steel I-beam. CAT-5 ethernet cable was pulled to a central punch block across the ceiling. A central vacuum was installed (Vacuflo, visible on the back wall in the new utility room). Temporary lighting was installed. A full bath has been rough-plumbed, vented and wired, along with a laundry alcove. A glass block wall replaced the old termite-ridden double-hungs and a kalamein security door was installed. Another angle. I still have to frame the party wall. You can see the drywall I need for that. I just have to move that one last piece of conduit and the ceiling will be ready for can lights and sheetrock. One issue came up in the very cold weather lately: the fact that I don’t have any basement radiators. It’s comfortable now but once the utility room and that soffet are closed in, it could get a bit outdoorsy down here. I hit upon a novel solution: installing forced air vents along the soffet and a small squirrel cage fan to evacuate heat from that 2" steam pipe, possibly triggered by a thermocouple on the pipe.
Most of the drywall is up, taped and primed. 13 recessed lights replaced the temporary lighting, all running on X10 of course. The full bath is ready for tile and fixtures. View from the back. The ceiling will probably be the last thing I close in because there’s still a bit of wiring I need to do for the first floor
The basement may not be finished but the shop is functional. So I'm moving on to other projects in the living areas. Those clamps are securing one of the French doors I'm building for the living room rehab. See all that dust on the pipes over the table saw? It's because of static electricity generated by the central vac pipe overhead. I get a lot of abuse for that red oak workbench I built. Three years later, with more tools.
The basement bath is done, except for installing the doors. I'd like to say this was a painless job but just rerouting the plumbing to hide it under that pedestal lav, which I needed because of the restricted knee room for the john, took a weekend. The shower pan. This was a wonderboard, mud and liner job. Yes, I know the tile match is dubious. I started off building and tiling the shower and got a great deal on tumbled stone from a contractor overage. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough to do the entire bathroom and to buy this tile at retail would have blown the budget big time. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
view from the shop. I need to resize this shot, obviously.




Bathroom

The bathroom project started in May 2004, five years after I bought the place. This is Stage One in the second floor renovation. That's how long it's taken me to finish more pressing projects elsewhere in the house.

Click on any picture to expand it.
It's a 1950s bathroom, but demolition revealed that it was probably its third renovation. Fifty years was long enough. Time for a facelift. Lovely color scheme, eh?


I was originally going to tackle this job myself but I had several reasons for bringing in my favorite general contractor, Frank O'Donnell, for the demolition and rough-in work. Mainly, I couldn't live without a functioning upstairs bath for the probably four or five months it would have taken me to get it functional again. My other bathroom is two stories down.

It's also one those "a man's gotta know his limitations" things. The job required moving a potential load-bearing wall. There were tons of debris and materials to be moved in and out over newly finished floors. The bathroom sits over the heavy oak ceiling I built two years ago, on a concrete floor that needed to be broken up with a sledge hammer. It involved breaking/repairing the roofline for a new vent and exhaust and tapping into old, brittle cast iron plumbing. The second floor needed an electrical subpanel and, while I'm pretty good with electrical, I shy away from heavy amperage. Frank has also installed dozens of Jacuzzis and steam rooms, and any DIYer who's installed a Jacuzzi knows what I'm talking about.

Day #2: Most of the demolition was completed and the debris carted away, including removal of the rear wall separating the old bath from a walk-through closet. A new wall will be constructed to make the bath about two feet deeper to accomodate the oversized Jacuzzi tub. It looks like, many decades ago, there was another sink on the second floor. But the old branch was just crimped closed, not sealed. That explains the occasional sewer smells in the old bathroom on hot days.
Very scary, old aluminum wiring. Well, it's gone. A new 50-amp subpanel will be installed next week to accomodate the second floor rewiring. Day #3: The old wiring has been removed. The subpanel was installed and #6 BX cable pulled from the basement. A couple of ceiling can lights and sconces are in place.

I have to make the decision today on whether or not to go ahead with the installation of central air-conditioning. It will be far cheaper to do the second floor at this stage while the walls are still open. I want to use a ductless system. These units are quieter and more efficient than window units but don't require expensive, ugly a/c ducts. Frank says he can get the second floor installed, with heads but minus the outside condensor unit, for $2600. I wanted to push this expense off till next summer but i think i'm going to do it as it will save me lots of installation headaches later.
Day #5: The new back wall is framed. And we ran into a problem.

The 36-inch wide Jacuzzi was going to move the toilet to a position that would have required cutting through two floor joists to accomodate its 4-inch drain. Frank recommended against it. Karen found the solution. The tub will lay flat against the new back wall, vanity on the left wall, toilet to the right of the entrance door. That makes the plumbing a lot easier and her plan incorporates cabinets that make use of dead space in the old design. 		Tenement shot. Maybe the old bathroom wasn't so bad after all.
Drains and vents are almost done. If I was doing this by myself I would have used PVC for all of it but Frank is old school about cast iron/no hub drains. On the other hand, cast iron is quieter and did I really want to be eating in the dining room and hear a toilet flushing over my head?

That's Chopper inspecting what he thinks might be his new litter pan. 		The interesting thing in this shot is the new run for the upstairs central air conditioning, inside those black rubber insulators. It runs two stories down to the basement, across the ceiling soffet and out to the back yard under the deck. I couldn't believe how fast Dimitri's crew worked. All were native Russians and none spoke a word of English so we communicated with hand signals. Come to think of it, all the workers are either Russian or first-generation Irish.

That big box with all the wires in it is the switch panel for three of the four lighting circuits and the exhaust fan. I definitely have to clean up that rat's nest before close in.
In the photo are the new copper runs from the basement as well as the PVC vent and GFCI outlet for the vanity. Frank's contract stops at hanging the drywall and laying the mud floor, which is when I take over. I'll be doing the taping too because I will probably need to remove drywall to make adjustments for sconces and outlets. In fact, I know I will. Day Six: There was lots of visible progress today and, as always, it's with mixed impressions. On the one hand, drywall hides all the internal funk and begins to show what the finished room will look like. On the other, it always looks a lot smaller than you thought it would. This is no different.
Rocking done. That dangling wire is the low-voltage power switch for the steam unit.

About that tub: arrrrgh!! And here I am trying to get rid of a pink bathroom. This tub was supposed to be deep red, like a burgundy!

Let this be a lesson to online buyers. I'm a professional web developer so I have no excuse. I already know that web colors can't be trusted and I should have paid more attention to the site's color samples. If I had I would have noticed that they were GIFs, not JPEGs, which are very unreliable indicators of real-world colors.

There was a $400 restocking fee and eight week turnaround on returns so I'm stuck with it. I'm going to have to find some way to de-pinkify this bathroom, possibly by using grey-scale natural stone in the tile surround. 		The digital camera's aperture got confused by the brightness of that skylight. During the day, that skylight brings in enough sun that you don't even need artificial lighting in here. It still needs a glass panel to seal off the shaft though because the skylight is vented.

Frank's job is done. Finishing up the bath is on me from here on.
Shower surround tiling and grouting completed. I need to wait another day for the grout to cure before scrubbing off the last of the grout residue. The marble medallion is something I found on Ebay for ~$200. I wanted a greyish, natural stone field tile to offset the unexpectedly pink tub.

This was the hardest tiling job I've done, mainly because of that <expletive> slate tile. Actually, it's a 3/8" ceramic floor tile that I got cheap as a contractors return. But I've never encountered anything as indestructible as this stuff. I wanted to keep the grout lines evenly spaced around the surround but the tile was impervious to a carbide tile bit. I moved the vertical grout line so I could use my diamond wet saw to cut for the fixtures.

Frank dropped by to check my progress and turned me on to a way I could have done this without moving that grout line: with a hand grinder loaded with a diamond blade. You do a plunge cut from the back. I tried it on the vanity tile later and it worked great.

The Jacuzzi works fine but the steam unit only pumps a stream of warm water out the nozzle. Jacuzzi's sending me a new PC board. 		Shower doors and trim installed. Here's a good example of scrounging on the cheap. It's typical for a Jacuzzi like this to be installed with a marble ledge under the front lip of the tub. It has to be waterproof so it can't be wood. But I didn't want to introduce another texure/color to the bath or pay $150 for something I didn't want. Solution: Trex decking. After a little cutting and planing, it looks like it's part of the removable beadboard panel underneath. Cost: $12.
I found Kohler fixtures to match the Jacuzzi. I added a slate counter top to match the floor and shower surround. There are four separate lighting circuits in this small room. To do: raised panel cabinet doors. Beadboard paneling. I went back/forth on what style to use and settled on this, mainly because it was the only solid one-by stock I could find locally. I whitewashed it, adding a tube of burnt umber stain per quart to get the grey I wanted, followed by four coats of water-based poly. I capped it with a poplar shelf which has a low-voltage light strip for up lighting through those decanters filled with colored water. Looks excellent at night.


Post Mortem

The loo almost became my Waterloo. It's a lesson in project planning, or lack thereof, and in false economy.

There were a few derailments during the initial construction, like the last-minute bathroom fixture rearrangment. In the heat of battle I made a decision which I didn't think through and it had implications on things like the entry door, which now swings into the vanity. That also required a change in the vanity design to something more compact (I had already started on a nice cabinet with carved Queen Anne legs). It also resulted in a smaller bathroom than I wanted.

In retrospect, I think the original fixture layout would have worked fine if the toilet were placed on a six-inch platform and the drain wrapped around the wall behind the tub. I think it would have looked pretty cool too. A real throne! If I hadn't been on a contractor's clock I would have done it that way.

Another problem was the tile I chose for the shower wall. I got a bargain because it was a contractor return at a liquidators. But when I later decided to use the same tile on the floor I found that I'd bought the last Zirconia Radica Negro in NYC. That meant a day searching tile stores for an acceptable substitute, which cost 3x as much and didn't come in 14x14. And it had to be special ordered. Add another week and another red star to the budget.

But the biggest derailment was that ugly tub color. To make matters worse, Jacuzzi stopped carrying the color last year which is why I got it cheap. I'd assumed that Jacuzzi sold matching lavs and toilets so I pushed off ordering them. I was wrong. Another couple of days turned up an acceptably matching color from Kohler called Wild Rose. But, you guessed it: very expensive and special order, almost wiping out the money I saved by buying that close-out tub. It cost a six-week delay in completion too.

My bathroom wasn't completed until mid-August. That's how ten-minute decisions postponed can swell to two month delays.

Then there are those glass shower doors. I way under-budgeted for those. I'd assumed $700 or so, without doing any actual homework of course. They wound up costing more than twice that, with some estimates double even that! Because it's a steam shower the doors had to be custom fabricated with special seals.

Overall, I'm not happy with how the bathroom turned out, or rather it fell short of my expectations. The final irony is that I'd never even tried a Jacuzzi tub before I bought one. It really wasn't worth the expense and effort.




Kitchen and Extension



I decided to approach the kitchen renovation and replacement of the rear extension as one project. Both were in such bad shape that it made no sense to build new on to old.

Click on any picture to expand it
The original kitchen was pretty funky. The cabinets were 1950s vintage and suffering from dry rot. There were no countertop electrical outlets. The ceiling fixture, as I soon discovered, wasn't even mounted in an electrical box. It was hanging on taped cloth wires. It was depressingly dark, requiring artificial lighting 24 hours a day. But the major problem was no countertop space. The original rear extension was a drafty laundry room, with a floor that suddenly dropped at a 15 degree angle. It was so riddled with termites that the owner had braced the shed with 2x4s, which were themselves chewed to pulp. It was neither insulated nor heated. There was evidence of old pipe breaks. The large, ugly attachment at the upper right corner is a kitchen vent, the soffet made from sheetrock. There was a mini-rain forest growing in there. I'm still killing centipedes that once called it home.
Pictorial anthologies have a deceptive way of compressing time, so I'll be honest here. This job started in early July and wasn't completed until the following January. Actually, it's still not completed. I've saved the final finish trim for one mondo project when the dining and living rooms are completed.


Thanks to the help of fifty generations of termites, the old extension was razed in about thirty minutes. A trench was dug below the frost line to accommodate a concrete and cinder block foundation. Unfortunately, work began on the first day of the hottest ten consecutive days in NYC history. Due to the heat and despite constant spray from a hose, the foundation set up quickly. I decided to turn the bottom into a tool shed and unheated storage area. The rough framing went up in a day and was braced in anticipation of a thunderstorm due in town that evening.
I know, bleh... vinyl siding. But it's inexpensive, low maintenance, easy to install and insulate, and it's only visible to my immediate backyard neighbors, who don't offer me much of a view either. A six-foot Anderson slider, a four-foot Anderson window and a five-foot sealed skylight closed it in. Electrical was rerouted for the spotlights and to add another set of spots on the extension. These, like all the house lighting, are computerized with X10 protocol switches, under the command of a Linux server. There was a bit of time between these two shots. In the interim, new thermopane windows were installed along with a whole-house security system. You can see one of the sirens mounted under the soffet. The steel deck was extended three feet so it would be flush with the new extension. The location of the air conditioner was a bit of a disappointment. I would have liked it over the window but there wasn't enough height available because of the upstairs window unless I went with a flat roof.
Interior finishing begins. A dedicated 20a circuit feeds the outlets in this room as well as the outside GFCI. A 220VAC outlet was installed for the 18,000 BTU wall air conditioner. The walls and ceiling were insulated and the sheetrock hung. Purists will be skeptical of all the small pieces of drywall I used over the window but I under-ordered for this stage. I only owned motorcycles and I didn't feel like paying a lumberyard $50 to deliver an eight-buck sheet of Type X. I'm pretty good with a taping knife though.
As a solution to a dark kitchen lacking in countertop space, I decided to blow out the wall between it and the dining room. I wasn’t sure at this stage exactly what I wanted to put in that hole, just that I wanted a hole there.

One of the myriad problems with renovating old houses is lumber dimension. These are real 2x4s while modern 2x4s are actually 1-1/2” by 3-1/2”. That extra half inch means trouble with drywall later so I opted to toss them all out and reframe the wall with new lumber. This wall also had old sheet metal air ducts hidden in them, which is curious because the house has ancient steam heat. 		The pass-through is framed and another dedicated 20a circuit is run for the outlets on that wall. The old gypsum ceiling was pulled down and furring strips tacked up to accommodate a tin ceiling. The front wall was in such bad shape that I tore it down and reskinned it with sheetrock. Another 20a line was pulled for the fridge. The old refrigerator was originally sharing a circuit with most of the first floor.
Without a doubt, the most miserable job was cleaning the brick in the foreground. Because the new extension is wider than the old one, this was originally outside brick so it had a hundred years of paint, cement parging and ThoroughSeal on it. I used a heat gun, K-Strip, Peel Away, a grinder and four gallons of muratic acid to get it to this stage. If I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t. I still have to tuck point it.
The same picture from another perspective. The interior on the extension was skimcoated using a nifty tool called Magic Trowel. Thinking ahead to winter, I added a steam baseboard unit under the window. I'm real glad I did that. You'll notice my cat, Chopper, on the window sill. He manages to find his way into a lot of these shots. The plumbing fun begins. After ripping down the old cabinets, it was like urban archeology: the Yellow Period, the Sea Green Period, the Creosote Period, etc. The pipes and drain were shot. I ran new copper down to the basement and new no-hub drain and vent. There's Chopper again.
The tin ceiling is almost up, except for some missing crown moulding (yet another under-order). The cement board is on the floor and walls. The new cabinets are being hung. I was deep into that stage of home renovation where friends knew better than to return my calls so I did this job by myself, using temporary scaffolds. My cabinet workshop. I bet Norm doesn't have a chandelier in his!

I finally decided what I wanted in that pass-through: a granite counter with a brick eyebrow arch, inspired by a Mexican restaurant in Dallas.
The cabinets are up, the granite is down, cement board is on the floor and walls, and the new appliances are installed. I decided to go with an inexpensive stainless sink for now, figuring that no matter what I used would get destroyed once I started the basement renovation and lost my slop sink. I refaced the existing dishwasher with oak veneer. The original fridge is still working so I decided to put the dollars for a new one elsewhere.

Most people opt for solid color granite. I think this is a mistake. Not only does it wind up looking like an artificial countertop, granite has a tendency to scuff and scratch. Patterned granite will hide this and keep looking good for years. Black granite especially is a maintenance queen. 		The tile floor is down. With the tin ceiling, the natural oak cabinets and the granite counters, I decided to complete the retro ice cream parlor look with one-inch hex tiles. I really wanted a border strip too but was eventually talked out of it by a neighbor because it would draw attention to how narrow the kitchen is.

Here's a tip I learned the hard way: when working with small tiles like this you're going to get a lot of thinset oozing in the joints. You'll make life a lot easier for yourself if you color the thinset to match the color of your grout.
Moulding is added in the extension and the brick eyebrow is up. Then I waited two weeks for the mortar to cure before daring to remove the scaffold over that granite countertop. I wish I'd gone with divided light windows in the back, but it would have delayed closing in the extension for another week.

 Crown moulding is added to the cabinets, the walls are hung and skimcoated and the tile is on. Looking at the photos, I think I need to do something special with the addition. It's too plain.
The tile backsplash is in. I used the same green and 1" white marble accent tiles that I used on the foyer floor, but with a grey grout to tie it in with the granite countertops. I also built some butcher block to cap that brick kneewall next to the stove. This is the real deal. I made it with 3/4" maple strips and 3/8" threaded rod, finished with mineral oil. No glue.




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