Christina's Bathroom

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7/1/2005      We've just returned from dropping Christina off at the airport for a month-long trip to visit her father in Florida.  This will give us the much needed time to completely rip apart her bathroom while she isn't put out by all of the noise and dust.  Our hopes are that she'll come home to a completely renovated area, which she'll no doubt completely trash because she's a teenage female.
       Beth has informed me that this is normal for them and I have accepted the fact that arguing this point is futile.  I am outnumbered.
7/4/2005      Spent most of the working day tearing out Christina's shower stall.  It was cracked and broken and no amount of  silicone  was going to stop water from leaking into the walls.  Found a new assortment of wallpaper from back when the shower was just a steel tub.  It's all mildewed so the walls are going to have to come out.  I'd like replace them with concrete board and do an interesting tiling job on the walls but we'll probably just keep it inexpensive and line it with fiberglass.
     The wood floor immediately surrounding the tub has rotted areas from decades of water being splashed out and trapped under the old linoleum floor covering.   This isn't really a problem since the floor has to be leveled anyway.
    The tub is stable and as safe as can be but leans away from the drain so I'll have to jack it up from the veranda area below and level it.
     This is going to be a major project. 
7/5/2004    I hate failing at anything so today was just a big waste of time and effort.  Jacking up the tub is not going to work.  That thing has got to weight 1,000 pounds and the jack slipped out from under it on three occasions.  Each time I thought to myself, "Well, this is it.  Sayonara!"  Luckily, the tub stayed where it was supposed to each and every time.
    New game plan: chop it up and install a new, light-weight model.  Beth will be home soon.  We'll eat and then go tub shopping.  Tomorrow will be a day of screaming metal saws and big chunks of tub being tossed out the window.
7/6/2005    It's 1:00 and I've just removed the element of danger where the tub could have fallen through the floor and killed an innocent washer & dryer.  I feel incredibly manly right now, having swung a sledge hammer and beaten that old tub into small pieces.
     Sledge hammers are one of the last traces of our Cro-Magnon legacy.
7/8/2005     Since yesterday was a complete bust due to running around and buying materials, today is now proving to be very progressive.  The floor is all ripped away now and the slope of the room has measured out at 3.5" from side to side.  I'm correcting this by cutting adaptive lengths of 2X4's and setting a cutting line with a level.  It seems to be working and I'm hoping to have the new flooring on by this evening.
7/11/2005     A good friend of ours passed away and I took an extra day off to build a memorial website for him.  This pushed the progress on the bathroom floor back a day but now it's on track again.
     The leveling process is coming along just fine.  So far there have been no rude surprises so either the house settled 80 years ago or the guys who installed the tub just weren't thinking about what they were doing.  In either case I noticed that the original porch floor had no cross bracing so I'll be adding that while I'm in there.  I'm also replacing almost all of the older square nails with screws to give the flooring more structural integrity and reduce the chance of it ever squeaking.  When an older floor squeaks it's usually caused by wood rubbing up and down the shaft of a nail.  Screws never squeak.
7/17/2005     Shopping day.
     We settled on a vanity, counter top and shower stall for Christina's bathroom from Lowe's.  Once again, we tied it on the roof of Beth's car and lugged it all home.  The fun never ends.
7/18/2005    The clock is ticking and it seems to be speeding up as the work slows down. Over half of her walls are now stripped and about 50% of the ceiling is out, too.  Tomorrow is an absolute must in regard to having the room thoroughly demolished and clean so that I can start getting the walls and insulation in as quickly as possible.
7/19/2005      Great progress today.  The room is stripped and ready for insulation.  Good thing, too.  The heat radiating  from the roof is unbelievable.  It feels like you have a sunburn when you're standing in there.
     I've counted 19 bags of rubbish so far.  We'll be needing to rent a truck pretty soon to make a dump run. 
7/20/2005      The insulation is partially finished.  It would be completely wrapped up except that nothing is a standard size in this *(&(^#* house and I have to cut and tape lengths of insulation to create correct sizes.  It can't be smashed into place because air has to get in the insulation fibers or it won't insulate and it then becomes useless.
     What do I have here, two weeks to finish?  Piece o' cake.
     (Yeah, right!)
7/22/2005      Nothing is working out.  The drywall shattered in several places, so I scrapped that idea and decided to give it a 'boat hull' kind kind of look by running small boards the length of the room.
7/24/2005     We didn't get much done yesterday because we decided to hit an estate auction where we picked up an 1888 Barrister's Chair after a short bidding battle with an old battle axe biddy.  It looks great with the new desk in the study.
     Today was a different story.  While Beth spent many hours getting the cleaning caught up I was able to complete the ceiling in Christina's bathroom and get about 1/4th of the drywall up.  It would have been more, but the drywall is all stored in the veranda so each cut has to be made on the first floor and then that piece is taken upstairs where I have to cut it again because it wasn't cut correctly the first time. Actually, that only happened twice but it felt like it happened a a lot.
    The temperature difference in the room was remarkable as each sheet went up.  This is going to be one of the best made rooms in the house when it's finished.
    I have about 14 days left, and only 10 of them are free for working.  Tick tock, tick tock...
7/26/2005      Made lots of progress today.  All of the walls are up except for the two small ones that will contain the shower area.  I got the mud started so tomorrow will be a day of sanding, mudding and getting the floor prepped and painted to get ready for the new tiles.  The floor still needs some bracing but they're more for noise reduction and keeping the wood stable for the tiles than for safety.
7/27/2005     Most of the drywall joints and corners are now filled but still need a little more work before they can be painted.  The ceiling is primed as is the raw wood floor.  The highlight of the day was using a torch to burn off all of the old peeling paint around the doorway.  It smelled horrible but came off fairly quickly and I had a strong exhaust fan mounted in the window so it was tolerable.  It will be painted tomorrow and the new linoleum floor tiles will all be put down.  I'd imagine tomorrow's picture will be a real change of pace for readers but it will be this coming Sunday's pictures that should really look good.
7/29/2005      The vanity is in but needs to be connected.  The ceiling is about 80% finished.  The tiles are in.  It's starting to look like a real bathroom except that it still looks like a wood shop.  One week to go until Annette comes to visit and Beth wants it done by then so that she has her own bathroom and shower to use.  The pressure is on.
7/31/2005      The room is now primed and most of the moldings have been put in place.  The ceiling is finished but needs two coats of paint as do the walls.  Three full working days left to go.  It may be just enough time.
8/1/2005     The shower unit looks like it will be a nightmare to install.  We'll see.
8/3/2005     Making it just under the wire, the sink and toilet now work and we're ready for our first Floridian guest, Annette.  The shower will have to wait but she'll at least have a half-bath during her visit.  Of course, even this didn't fly without a hitch or two.  The cold water line to the sink had a leak and had to be welded a second time and the feed line for the toilet wasn't tightened enough and leaked all over the place including through the floor and onto the massive stack of drywall below.  After about an hour of tweaks and turns it was wrapped up just in time for us to head off to Baltimore to pick her up.
12/10/2005      Finally got back into this room with the colder weather upon us.  Put in the rear walls and corner of shower after first installing concrete board.  It's starting to look hopeful, but this shower unit has the absolute worst instructions ever printed.  I'll try to remember to put the name and model number here later on in the hope of helping others avoid this nightmare.
     In the meantime, the ceiling above the stall is now buckling a little, but I don't mind.  Caulk is on sale.
12/19/2005      The shower stall is finally assembled but not in the way it was supposed to be.  That would have been impossible since nothing fit together properly and none of the screw holes lined up at all.  Just getting the door to function was an act of pure improvisation.  If the thing doesn't leak I'll be amazed.
     I'm into the plumbing at this point.  Now, I normally hate plumbing, but now I really really hate it.  Nothing is going right and I keep getting pinched and/or burned at every move.  If I weren't so pig-headed and cheap I'd be tempted to call a real plumber to come in and do this crap while I do something more pleasurable such as having my fingers bashed with a hammer.
     If you want a good perspective on this project's timeline, no problem.  Last year at this very time, we started Christina's room and bath so that it would be ready when she got home from visiting her Dad in Florida for the holidays.  Now the goal is simply to let her take a shower before she leaves to visit him again.
     I will be very happy when this part of the house is completed.
12/21/2005      It took the better part of the day to wrap up but Christina's shower is functional and was christened last night with its first use.  I wish I'd photographed every version of the plumbing I created throughout the day, but I was too busy losing my temper and loudly reciting every obscenity known to man.  I must have sounded as though I was preparing for a spelling bee hosted by Larry Flynt as I shouted out each word, then used it in a complete sentence, repeating the word when I finished.  I'm confident I actually used several words in contexts never before heard as I  repeatedly dashed down into the cellar to turn on the water only to hear Beth and/or Christina yelling that it still leaked.  I'd cut away the offending section of pipe and replace it only to have the same frustrating results again and again.
     The bottom line was that I finally got the job done and the kid was able to not only use her own shower for the first time, she immediately moved all of her showering articles up to her own private bathroom and transformed our bathroom into a nice, neat place.  I didn't care about that, though.  My goal was to fulfill a promise I'd made to myself and I did it.
    Never again.  Never.  Installing shower stalls is the worst!
1/4/2006     I still have to wrap up the trim and take care of a few other little details, but I have a bad head cold right now.  This has put the entire house on hold for days on end.