First up - We finished up the interior framing. The shower now has a half wall and a curb. The bathtub also has its very own frame. To secure the bottom plates to the concrete slab, I drilled several holes through the plate and into the concrete. We then cleaned up the area, applied a generous amount of construction adhesive to the plate, lined up the holes and drove two 16 penny nails down through the plate and into the slab. The holes are small enough that the two nails were very difficult to pound in, but the finished result is a plate that would not budge and could not be pulled up without destroying the wood. Once the adhesive dried, these walls aren't going anywhere! We then framed right on top of them.
The shower got a 4 foot tall half wall to separate it visually from the toilet. The half wall was fairly rigid, but still had some wobble to it which I expected. I stiffened it up with a few metal ties in various places. The rest of the shower will be boxed in with 1/4" glass much later down the road.
The tub "platform" was framed with 2x6 and sits directly below the 63"x48" window. The frame includes an extra 16" space at one end where we will place built in shelving and an IR fireplace. It's going to be sweet!
We also framed/furred out the concrete block wall on the original house. We needed to be able to run drains, vent pipes and water pipes in the wall, so we opted to use 2x4 studs to give us a nice sized wall cavity. I continued the framing into the closet/dressing room area for uniformity and to make putting electric into the wall much easier. The bottom plate was fastened in the same manner as the shower and tub framing. We tied the top plate into the top plate of the existing house with metal ties made for this purpose.
As you can see in the picture, we framed some interesting looking boxes/indentations into the wall and backed them with OSB. The two larger indentations will get mosaic tile around the inside edges and a mirror in the middle, creating a sort of recessed mirror with a tiled ledge. The skinny, tall indentation will receive the same tile treatment, but no mirror. It will house a rather tall decorative piece, such as a vase with flowers.
We spent an entire day figuring out exact light spacing and installing the various can lights and ceiling boxes. There are a total of 9 recessed lights in the bathroom (6 -6" lights and 3 -4" lights) spread out in three separate dimmer switches. The ability to dim the lights is critical and the added ability to choose which areas of the bathroom to light will be a nice feature.
Dimmer switch one will power four 6" lights that run about 2 feet from the vanity wall (the one we framed out) and over the bathtub. Switch two will power three 4" lights in front of the shower and over the toilet. Switch three will power two 6" lights in the shower. Separately, we put in one ceiling box over each sink from where pendant lights will hang. These lights are controlled separately by a switch at the vanity (also a dimmer).
I spent a couple hours working on wiring, but I'm only about 20% through it. I'll be spending next weekend almost exclusively on wiring.
Our biggest accomplishment this past weekend was plumbing! The original plan was to use the existing copper pipes that ran from the main house into the old bathroom we tore down. During planning, we expected those lines to be 3/4" copper. When we demo'd the bathroom, we discovered that the cold line was 3/4" and the hot line was 1/2". We capped the lines anyway so we could turn the water back on and I figured I'd cross that bridge when we came to it.
Well, the time came to revisit the water pipe issue. While the 3/4" cold line would be fine for supplying the bathroom, the 1/2" hot line is undersized for supplying a bathroom with this many fixtures, not to mention the fact that it has to travel upwards of 70 feet from the water heater to reach the furthest fixture. I researched our options and decided to run a completely new hot water line from the water heater to the bathroom. I figured I might as well run a new cold line as well since I was going to be up there and the 60 year old line is starting to show problems in other areas of the house.
Saturday was spent in the attic. I had never been up into the attic before this past Saturday and now I know why. To describe it as a hot, dusty, dirty hell hole would be putting it mildly. There are two access points - One is outside over the carport and has an opening of roughly 14"x36". The other access is in the coat closet by the front door and has a slightly easier to get through opening of about 24" by 24" once you figure out how to get a ladder in tiny closet.
I didn't take any pictures while we were up there. The tight quarters made carrying anything but necessities unreasonable, and to be honest, I was so miserable up there I couldn't imagine wasting even a minute taking pictures. The rafters are traditionally framed and the low 4/12 pitch of the roof means there isn't much head room. On top of that, we had cellulose insulation blown in about three years ago, so we had to literally swim through it to get around, making for a very dirty job. I wore a commercial respirator while I was up there which at least cleaned kept my lungs from being clogged by insulation, but had the downside of making breathing more difficult in the stifling, hot and stagnant air.
We were originally going to use copper for the water lines, but my research into Pex, the ease of installation and the massive cost savings compared to copper convinced me that pex was the way to go. There are three types of design when it comes to pex. We chose to use type "three" which is where you run a main line to a specific area, then use a manifold to branch off to individual fixtures. We ran continuous 3/4" blue and red color coded pipe up through the ceiling above the water heater (in the laundry room), into and across the attic, and into the new bathroom. You can see below where the lines come into the bathroom area from the attic. We dug out insulation down to the ceiling rafters, secured the pipe using pex clips and nails, then covered everything over with the insulation.
In order to tap into the water lines without knocking a hole through the wall in the laundry room, I decided to cut out the lines into and out of the water heater and replace everything from where the pipes come out of the wall. That morning, I turned off the gas to the water heater in anticipation of working on it later in the day. When we were ready, I shut off the water to the house and then cut off the cold water supply line to the water heater a few inches from the wall, followed by the hot water line next to it. I then soldered in various 3/4" fittings, valves and pipe to reconnect the water heater and tap into the lines for the bathroom water supply. I had never soldered valves before, so I was nervous about damaging the innards of the valve with too much heat. I tried to be conservative with the torch and applied a wet cloth to the valve when I finished with each one to help cool it down. This seems to have worked (knock on wood) since the valves all work properly and hold water.
I haven't yet attached the pex lines (you can see one hanging down in the picture) but the copper work is complete. I replaced the water heater shutoff valve and put in shutoff valves for both the cold and hot water as it travels to the pex lines. While I was at it, I also replaced the water heater supply hoses since the old ones were looking a bit...well..old. We turned the house water back on and checked for leaks and tightened a couple threaded fittings. Done!
The mass of brass fittings are a "home-made" manifold. Finding a pex manifold locally turned out to be impossible. The two major plumbing supply houses didn't carry them and both suggested I make my own out of fittings, which is apparently "what most plumbers do." So that is what we did. The fittings are all 3/4"x1/2"x3/4" T fittings which allow the 3/4" pex pipe to continue to the bathtub, with all other fixtures tying in at this one spot with 1/2" pipe. This should ensure good water flow as well as containing the joints to one area instead of many. As you can tell, we are not done with the bathroom plumbing yet, but I hope to finish it up this week.
If plumbing was our biggest accomplishment this weekend, I'd say putting in the window was the most exciting. We had talked about and planned on putting in the window every weekend for about a month now, but it hadn't happened. Sunday afternoon, we finally decided to get it done. The behemoth 63"x48" double pane, low-e, tempered glass, window weighed an appalling 200 pounds. Lifting such a fragile and heavy object and then fastening it into place was too much for two people. We called my dad over who graciously helped us lift the window into position and then helped Jason hold the window in place while I check from plumb and square and fastened it into place with screws.
The picture bellow is absolutely terrible. I will get a better one from *outside* and post it in my next update. While getting the window in was pretty quick and overall, not a major part of the project, it does give us a sense of "inside vs. outside." Before the window was in, the bathroom had a very "outside" feel to it. Now it most surely does feel inside. I'm sure that means it will also get warm in there quite quickly during our sunny days. Hopefully, we will get everything squared away from the inspection and get some insulation and drywall up so we can start heating/cooling the space.
And there you have it! We're up to date on progress. Be back in another week or so with updates on electrical and maybe even mechanical...
