Boy, four solid days of working on the house and I am well ready for a fabulous vacation at work. Where most of the day I get to sit at a desk or a microscope in a temperature controlled, very clean, relatively power-tool-free environment. Ah.
Achy bones aside, we managed to get a fair amount of work done. We finished framing up the rest of the walls and nailing down the new subfloor. We also did a little reinforcement on the subfloor, which has made it seem a lot sturdier. No more squeaks!
We took out the very large bedroom window to prepare for the new window which should arrive tomorrow morning, 930 AM. This turned out to be a frightening job. The window is 10 ft long by 4 ft high with metal frame and single pane. It had a small crack in it and I knew there was no way we could get it out without breaking it. So I thought I could do a "controlled break". I put some tape on the inside in large strips and then scored it in between thinking I could break it along some nice lines and then remove the glass in large chunks. Well, it turned out to be harder to crack than I thought it would be. I used a countersink and a hammer to crack it along the scores, but the pieces wouldn't come loose. Finally, we ended up using a 2x4 (to get some distance from flying glass shards) and just pounding it out. I had laid a glass barrier down outside to contain the shards and it was about 90% effective, which was pretty good. Glass was everywhere in quite a dramatic fashion. Most of it was outside in the containment field. A few small pieces landed in the neighbor's yard
(Dave went to retrieve them - luckily they were not home at the time!), and some landed inside. Then I had the very long, hot task of picking all the pieces up and putting them into cardboard boxes - the only semi-safe container I could come up with at the time. Convenient all those deliveries we had last week!
Walking on, walking on broken glass...
We then had some fun trying to see if we could slide flashing behind the siding. It looked like the siding was nailed about 8 inches below the window, so we thought it would be easy. Ha! Haven't we learned yet? No, no, it was nailed behind the tongue and groove, so we couldn't slip the flashing in. Plan B - different style of flashing. We'll install it at the same time as the window. Oh, we had to build a window sill, too.
Finally, on Monday, we got started on the plumbing. In particular, drains. We have 4 fixture in the new bathroom: sink, toilet, tub, and shower. Thus, 4 drains. We chose cast iron because that's what is used in the rest of the house and it's very quiet (no water noise through the walls
or under the floor when things are draining!) and very heavy. Oh, and gets your hands jet black. But it is relatively easy to work with if you don't mind black palms and lifting heavy items. The pipes go together with rubber couplings and then are water tight. Cutting the pipes was done with a scary tool we rented (see pic right). I do not know what this tool is called - possibly pipe cutter? Anyway, most of the day was spent in the crawl space (which is very aptly named) measuring and hooking up pipe. Not very pleasant. But we now have drains setup for all our fixtures.
The latest news on the toilet and tub are that they are on a truck leaving Kentucky today. With good luck they'll arrive early next week!
Achy bones aside, we managed to get a fair amount of work done. We finished framing up the rest of the walls and nailing down the new subfloor. We also did a little reinforcement on the subfloor, which has made it seem a lot sturdier. No more squeaks!
We took out the very large bedroom window to prepare for the new window which should arrive tomorrow morning, 930 AM. This turned out to be a frightening job. The window is 10 ft long by 4 ft high with metal frame and single pane. It had a small crack in it and I knew there was no way we could get it out without breaking it. So I thought I could do a "controlled break". I put some tape on the inside in large strips and then scored it in between thinking I could break it along some nice lines and then remove the glass in large chunks. Well, it turned out to be harder to crack than I thought it would be. I used a countersink and a hammer to crack it along the scores, but the pieces wouldn't come loose. Finally, we ended up using a 2x4 (to get some distance from flying glass shards) and just pounding it out. I had laid a glass barrier down outside to contain the shards and it was about 90% effective, which was pretty good. Glass was everywhere in quite a dramatic fashion. Most of it was outside in the containment field. A few small pieces landed in the neighbor's yard
(Dave went to retrieve them - luckily they were not home at the time!), and some landed inside. Then I had the very long, hot task of picking all the pieces up and putting them into cardboard boxes - the only semi-safe container I could come up with at the time. Convenient all those deliveries we had last week!Walking on, walking on broken glass...
We then had some fun trying to see if we could slide flashing behind the siding. It looked like the siding was nailed about 8 inches below the window, so we thought it would be easy. Ha! Haven't we learned yet? No, no, it was nailed behind the tongue and groove, so we couldn't slip the flashing in. Plan B - different style of flashing. We'll install it at the same time as the window. Oh, we had to build a window sill, too.
Finally, on Monday, we got started on the plumbing. In particular, drains. We have 4 fixture in the new bathroom: sink, toilet, tub, and shower. Thus, 4 drains. We chose cast iron because that's what is used in the rest of the house and it's very quiet (no water noise through the walls
or under the floor when things are draining!) and very heavy. Oh, and gets your hands jet black. But it is relatively easy to work with if you don't mind black palms and lifting heavy items. The pipes go together with rubber couplings and then are water tight. Cutting the pipes was done with a scary tool we rented (see pic right). I do not know what this tool is called - possibly pipe cutter? Anyway, most of the day was spent in the crawl space (which is very aptly named) measuring and hooking up pipe. Not very pleasant. But we now have drains setup for all our fixtures.The latest news on the toilet and tub are that they are on a truck leaving Kentucky today. With good luck they'll arrive early next week!
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