Putting up sheet rock in the guest bathroom

Wow! I went back and searched to see when the last post on the upstairs guest bathroom was and found that it was from November 2007!

I haven't done anything on the house in months as we've been out at the house in Woodbury most of the time. We're about to get a construction loan and will soon be going full tilt in the hopes of getting it livable by summer.

Anyways, we can't do anything more on Woodbury until we get the loan so I decided to do some work here.

Several months back I raised the ceiling joists up like I had done in the master bathroom, unfortunately I cant find the pictures of it.

Today I finally decided to get back in there and get the greenboard up. I was going to use the tongue & groove boards that I took down from the old second floor porch but in the end I decided against it and went with the green board.

First I put up insulation in the rafters on the sloped part of the roof and then put up the green board over that:

I can reach the flat part of the ceiling from the attic so I'll insulate that area later. Here is the completed ceiling:



Next I cut out and reframed the opening for the attic access:


The area's not very large but it will be nice to store small things and for access the plumbing and electrical.

After that I began insulating the walls and installing the green board over that:


That was as far as I got today, I'm going to need more insulation and a few more pieces of green board. Hopefully I can get this room completed soon...

Build a clawfoot tub shower ring for under $20

We've been forced to take baths for almost a year and a half now. I finally got fed up with that and decided to put together a shower. the shower kits online at these restoration places are expensive as hell so I decided to see if I could put together the parts myself. At this point we just need to get things working, later on when we have more time and money we can go back and put in the nicer, more expensive plumbing parts.

My original intention was to get the tub in the master bath working. I bought a shower riser for around $40, a set of supply lines for $20, two cut-off valves for around $8, and a PVC drain assembly for $14. I painted the PVC drain with the same bronze paint that I painted the clawfeet.


I already had an old tub faucet that was already in the tub.


I put everything together but had a problem with the faucet. The internals were rotted away so I couldnt shut the water all the way off. I looked online for another tub faucet that has a shower flange. I found one for $30 but it was hideous.

The tub in the downstairs bathroom is the only currently running tub. I took the gooseneck faucet off and found that the shower riser would fit with an adapter.


The only thing I needed now is a shower ring. Looking online I found them to be fairly expensive, $150 to well over $400.

A few weeks before we were looking through an old house for sale that had a shower ring in one of their bathrooms. Looking at it closely I discovered that they are constructed out of common parts that you can find at any home improvement store.

I went to Lowes and began searching for the right combination of parts. 1/2 electrical conduit was perfect, light, easily bendable, paintable, and cheap. I knew I would need some type of "T" to connect the ends to the wall and ceiling. I found a 1/2 cast iron "T" in plumbing that was perfect. I could have had the ends of the conduit threaded to fit the "T" but that didnt occur to me until after I had built it, and in the end I like it better the way it turned out anyways. Instead I found a 1/2 coupling that was threaded on one end and a compression fitting on the other. the last part I found was a 1/2 galvanized floor flange, I would use this to connect the ring to the wall and ceiling.

Parts list:

• 2 - 10' lengths of 1/2" electrical conduit - $1.98 ea
  
• 2 - 1/2" cast iron "T" connectors - $.98 ea
  
• 6 - 1/2" compression connectors - $.54 ea
  
• 2 - 1/2" Floor flanges - $2.97 ea
  

From the left; 1/2" "T" - 1/2" Compression/threaded connector - 1/2" Floor flange

First I cut the both pieces of conduit down to 81"


then I put each end in the pipe bender leaving 5 5/8" overhanging the edge.



This gave me an overall length of 61" once both ends were bent to 90 degrees.


Then I screwed the compression connectors onto either side of the "T" connector.


Then I slid the ends of the conduit into the connectors and tightened them down. The front connector I pointed forward towards the wall, the back connector I pointed up to the ceiling.

I measured the shower curtain so I could find how long the bar that attaches to the ceiling needed to be, in my case 28". For this piece I went ahead and used a 28" piece of galvanized pipe threaded at both ends. One end threads into the "T" connector, the other end into the floor flange. On the front end I used the compression connectors and a very short piece of conduit.

Back connector

Front connector

The above pictures were taken as I was test fitting everything into place. Once I knew everything fit I took it all down to paint the ring. I used the same bronze paint since this ring will eventually go in the upstairs master bathroom. I'm not going to have a shower in the main bathroom, only in the master and guest baths.



You may have noticed that this ring is a bit big for the tub. This is a 5' tub, both tubs upstairs are 5 1/2' so it should fit perfectly. Once I get a tub faucet for upstairs I will move the ring and shower riser upstairs. For now it's nice to have a shower again.

Study bookcase finished

I have not completed near as much on the house as I had hoped in the last few weeks. Most of the delay being from a hospital stay and a week of forced recuperation time. I have managed to accomplish a few things however.

I finished the built in book cases in the Study last week. I might add one more coat of amber shellac though.




It's very hard to get a good clear shot of the entire bookcase and to also get the lighting adjusted properly to show the true color of the bookcase. These images will have to do though. The one thing left to do on them is build the doors for the bottom shelf on either side.

I've been working on the master bathroom but I dont have any pictures of that yet. So far we've sanded and painted the clawfoot tub, painted the walls, and I've begun installing the beadboard wainscoting on the walls. Once the beadboard is done I need to paint it then finish building the double sink vanity. Hopefully I'll have some pictures of it soon.

Study built in bookcases and main bath vanity

Even though I havent posted any updates in a few weeks I've been pretty busy on the house. We also had to get the house ready for the big cookout on the 4th. It's hard to entertain guests in a construction zone. It turned out great though.

After finishing the deck last week I turned my attention to building the bookshelves in the Study. In this post I mentioned how I was going to use some of the front porch columns from the old Anderson house in the design. Unfortunately I didn't have enough salvaged 1x12 stock for the rest of the bookcase so I've had to use some new wood, worse yet it's not even Southern yellow pine, it's white pine. Lowes and Home Depot dont carry 1x12's in Southern yellow pine except for a few special pieces. I hate white pine but in the end I really dont think it will matter all that much. The bookcase is going to be stained dark walnut and very little of the white pine boards will be exposed once the books are in. The two main columns in the center are what will show the most and they are the old columns from the Anderson house, the two outside columns are a mix of older and new white pine but only 2" of their face shows, I'll probably do a faux grain on the face of them. Most of the shelves are white pine with the exception of the shelves that are directly above where the doors will be, those are Southern yellow pine.




I still need to build the top portion that will connect the two bookcases.

The other main project I worked on was the main bathroom vanity. We found this vanity totally by accident. We found some free old doors on Craigslist over a year ago. When we went and picked them from the couple that was giving them away their neighbor just happened to stop by. We got into a conversation about how we loved antique furniture and how we were in the process of searching for an old house that we could restore. He mentioned that he had some old furniture in his shop that he had intended to restore but had never gotten around to it and offered to give the pieces to us. He ended up giving us the vanity (an oak dresser), an old gas stove from the early 20's, and a very old, ornate victorian love seat (just the frame actually). He found the dresser on the curb years back about to be picked up by the trash truck.


Not much to look at but I knew that it could be fixed up very nicely. Once we got this house I knew it would be perfect for a bathroom vanity.

I stripped all the ugly brown paint off of it and stained it with a combination of mostly english chestnut and a little red mahogany and then polyed it.





We found the mirror frame in an antique store in Alabama, I have an old mirror that I need to get cut down to fit it. The sink is hand painted in Mexico and the faucet is brushed copper from Nottingham brass. I've already rebuilt the two top drawers to fit around the sink. The brace between the second and third drawers go will be removed. Then I'll biscuit join the drawer fronts together and cut them in half vertically to make two swing open doors. I still have to find some nice brass hardware for them.

Guest Bathroom floor finished

I finally got around to finishing the floor in the guest bathroom. It got put on the back burner because of my salvage operation at the Anderson House and because of the trees that needed to be planted.


Getting the toilet drain perfect was very important. As I mentioned earlier these old toilets have a larger drain than modern ones, they wont fit in a 3" flange so I had to rip out the plumbers work and use a 4" flange. It was very close but I managed to get everything to fit perfectly.


I went by the Anderson house on Saturday, most of the debris has been hauled away but there were still plenty of bricks laying around everywhere. I managed to collect another couple hundred. I now have a grand total of 1011 bricks.


I also managed to get our porch swing hung yesterday.

Next I hope to get the kitchen ceiling hung then it's back to the guest bathroom to rip out the walls and ceiling.

Sinks, landscaping, and more bricks

We got lucky and had another day to haul off bricks from the Anderson house. In our first load the other day we got 349 bricks. On our second load the night before last we got 396.

This is the first load of bricks

This is the second load

Along with the bricks we got a few stair treads (we have 2 broken ones on our stairs), the downstairs newel post, 3 window weights, and some random trim. They started loading everything up and hauling it away yesterday. We didn't have time to go back last night because we were busy planting the trees we got on our trip to Alabama over the weekend. Hopefully the crew wont work today because of the holiday and I'll be able to get some more bricks this afternoon.

As I mentioned we went to Alabama over the weekend and picked up a lot of trees. We got dogwoods (pink, white, and red), flowering crabapples (pink and white), and Crape Myrtles(white, pink, purple, and red). Some of them we picked up at a fleamarket for very good prices( the dogwoods are 6' and we got them for $8 each, the Crape Myrtles are 4' and they were $3 each), the rest we got from my girlfriends grandparents farm. We went out in the woods and found a lot of white dogwoods and pink and white crabapples. These needed to be planted ASAP since their roots were just sitting in water. we also got a lot of flowering bushes but those wont be planted until after this cold front passes.

These are the 2 dogwoods we planted in the front yard. The back right one is a white, the front left one is a pink.



Another reason for going to Alabama was to go to a place called Dixie Salvage. They carry builders overstock. I bought a wall cabinet for the kitchen (42"x30" oak face, solid plywood sides for $80). We also found 3 sinks there for our bathroom vanities, 2 for the double vanity in the master bathroom, and the 3rd for the main downstairs bathroom. The sinks are handpainted in Mexico. I wasn't sure about the design of them first but now I kind of like them.


The faucet is one we got from vintage tub, the handles have small extensions to raise them up by about 2" but I didn't have them installed for the picture. Everything is test fitted into place, I still have to refinish the vanity before I can permanently install everything.

We also found a faucet for our kitchen sink, it's brushed copper made by Kingston Brass, it was $50!


Hopefully when I get home this afternoon I can make another trip to the Anderson House for more bricks, if there's anything left that is.

Guest Bathroom - Work begins

Yesterday I started on the guest bathroom. It still has it original floor and none of it is rotted, the bad news, it's very sloped. The wood is way too brittle to pull up without destroying it so I'm having to lay a new floor. Since we're running out of time on getting the house done I've decided to use the original floor as a sub-floor. I'll add shims to the low spots to level everything out. I hate to do it this way but I dont have a choice.

This is the room to begin with:



Before I could even begin on the floor I had to do something about the plumbing for the toilet. The plumbers used 3" Schedule 40 for the drain line. The problem with that is that the flange on many old toilets will not fit into a standard 3" toilet drain flange. The toilet going in this bathroom has an especially large flange on it. I'm having to go back and redo all three toilet drain flanges in the house because of this.

The way I fixed this in the main bathroom downstairs was to cut the drain a few feet back and use a 3" to 4" coupling, then run 4" pipe to a 4" flange. This wasn't a problem since the plumbing extends down into the crawlspace. The problem here is that there is no room for that. The plumbing is constrained by the 2"x10" floor/ceiling joists. Luckily I was able to find a 3" to 4" 90 degree elbow, the 4" flange will be attached to the elbow with a short piece of 4" pipe. Luckily, there will be just enough room since I'll be installing the new floor on top of the old floor.

The part circled in red is what I replaced, notice the 3" to 4" elbow.

The elbow from above.

With the plumbing taken care of I started carefully taking out the baseboards. This was a major pain as I'm trying not to get too much debris in the kitchen below which pretty much turned out to be an exercise in futility.

You can clearly see the kitchen below through the studs.

In removing the door sill I found more evidence that this wall was the original back of the house, the studs were cut off at the floor to make the door, this was most likely originally a window.

With the baseboards out of the way I cleaned up the floor and removed any stray nails in the way. I was now ready to begin shimming the floor.


The first step was to find the high point, this turned out to be the wall between the bathroom and bedroom(the original back wall of the house), luckily it's pretty much level all the way along this wall, from there it slopes down and to the right(if you're standing in the doorway). With stringline I measured the drop at each joist. The total drop ended up being just over 1 1/2" in the far corner. Using measurments at 3 points along each joist I cut the shims and installed them. So there is no confusion I write the measurement on the sub-floor and on each end of the shim as I cut it.


With the floor leveled I began laying the new floor.



Because of the shims I'm face-nailing the boards for the the extra strength the added depth gives. I'm using 8D cut-nails. You can really see how unlevel the original floor was because of the shadows in the second picture.

Hopefully I'll finish the floor today and begin demoing the walls and ceiling.