Episode III Revenge of the Plumbing

Sunday dawned bright and/or early. More early than bright, but hey, who can complain? By now Justus and I were incredibly sore. They always say when you start some sort of regular physical activity, it's the 3rd day that you're most sore. Ibuprofen: The breakfast of Champions.

Let's review the current situation. The new tub is in and the Hardi-Back wallboards are up in the shower surround. So it's time to lay the floor underlayment. Since Charlie's still there (note that not a lot of humourous mishaps happen when Charlie's involved, as opposed to when I'm doing the work by myself...) it goes pretty straight forward. Charlie planned a layout that had the boards arranged such that I wouldn't have to cut a circular hole in the middle of a big board for my toilet drain. Much easier installation. So we laid the boards down and used subfloor glue and drywall screws to hold them in place.

Now it's time for one last piece of plumbing work before Charlene and Charlie leave. The tub spout pipe. Keep in mind it's Sunday late morning by now. We get out the installation instructions again and look for how far from the wall we're supposed to have the pipe stick out. Hmmmm Can't find it. 3 of us scour those directions and find every other single dimension we needed. How far apart the holes in your wall needed to be for the faucet handle connections, how far vertically the fuacet handle connection needed to be from the tub spout, etc. But nowhere could we find the length that the tub spout pipe needed to come out from the wall. Since the instructions explicitly say 7 day of the week tech support, we call. AND GET A RECORDING THAT THEY'RE CLOSED ON SUNDAY!!!! Bastards. So since Charlie is experienced in these matters, he measures, estimates, dry fits, and determines where he thinks he should cut the spout pipe and attach the fitting on the end that the tub spout will screw into.

Yay!!! We're done with plumbing. Oh. Wait a second. We notice that we can't get the eustacheon cap (that circular metal cap/flange that surrounds your pipes as they come out of the wall. It hides the edges of the hole) won't slip over the threaded end fitting. Charlie says "OK No problem. We'll just sweat (use the blow torch) it off. So we fire up the blow torch and he proceeds to heat the fitting. The idea is we'll re-melt the solder and pop the end piece off. Then slip the eustacheon cover back on, then re-sweat the end fitting back on. Wellllll let's just say solder doesn't re-melt as easily when it's been previously melted and "sucked" up into a pipe/fitting joint. Justus ended up going into the office/brewery/bike storage/future nursery to hold onto the pipes from the access panel side while Charlie pulled with pair of pliers from the tub side. It still took a good hour+ for us to get that fitting off. But we finally did and got the eustacheon cap and pipe fitting back on. Then, after things cooled down from the hot flame being applied we dry fitted the tub spout on. Perfect!!

By now, it's early afternoon on a Sunday and it's a ~4 hour drive for my sister and her husband to get back home, so they head on out. And we're also to the point that I'm ready to start tiling floor, so Justus heads home too. I can't stress enough how much it helped out having Justus, Charlie, Charlene, and Kelcey come help me that weekend. The plumbing work I would have had to contract out, which would have been "not cheap" shall we say. And the demolotion work would have taken me a LOT longer. And the tub wouldn't have been installed properly... Thanks again guys!!

So, Heidi and I say our goodbyes and I start tiling the floor. Tile work isn't difficult, as long as you pay attention to details and finishing areas. Charlie had helped me mark the floor before they left. We decided to have a whole square tile start in the floor by the tub against the wall oppisite of the toilet. That's the part of the floor you see when you first walk into the bathroom. I laid the tiles across the floor at the base of the tub and work my way towards the door. Since we'd laid the underlayment the way we did, notching my tiles for the toilet drain was a piece of cake. Especially since Charlie had left me his tile wet saw. When I'd read or heard about tile wet saws before, I understood the principle. You have a carbide tipped circular saw that cuts into your porcelain or ceramic tile. To keep it from chipping, it has water run over the saw blade. I'd always assumed these things needed a hookup to a water supply or something complicated like that. Nope. It's just a basin of water under the cutting surface that the saw blade passes throughas it rotates. The tile saw has a guard over the blade that A) protects you from the spinning blade and B) protects you from the water spray the blade throws. But when you're cutting notches into tiles and not just straight cuts all the way across, you have to lift the guard up so you can see where the blade is cutting into your tile to know when to stop cutting. And you get splattered. And it's not just clean, clear water. It's water that is tinted the color of your tile. Since we chose a sandy beige color (for some reason the manufacturer doesn't have sample pics on the web. Nor does Home Depot...) I got covered in a muddy, brown spray. But only once. I started wearing a lawn and leaf back like a crab house bib to stay relatively dry. So, the tile floor installation went pretty smoothly.

Until I got to the doorway. The tiles that go across the doorway ended up not being the same length. So, I have the middle tile of the three that go across the doorway sticking out into the carpetting more than the other 2. OK, no problem, I'll just have to get a transition piece of oak from Home Depot. And then I notice that I didn't notch around the door frame. My tile just sticks up to the edge of the frame instead of going all they around the door frame. 2 ways I could have fixed this. I could have put a tile on the floor and taken a hand saw and cut my door frame away at the level of the tiles. Or, I could have notched my tile to closer hug the door frame. Instead, I ended up with these huge gaps that needed a LOT of grout. sigh. Live and learn.

The next day I got up and grouted the joints and started on the bath wall tiles. But, that's a post for this weekend...