A shower.

So, in order to use the tiny space from the original bathroom, we had to tear it out. As mentioned previously, I went on an adventure to try and purchase a shower. And what an adventure it turned out to be. Phase Two in the shower project, turned out to be actually getting it installed.

First, we wanted to put it into the basement, where there was already a concrete floor. No problem, you say. Well, first we need to dig a giant hole in the floor in order to have the drain installed and working properly.


Also, one needs to have a LEVEL concrete floor in order to install a shower. Ours was not. It took us several bags of concrete in order to get the floor level, just in the small space required for the shower.

All of the bags of concrete pictured were actually used!

When it was all poured and smoothed over, it looked pretty nice. Until you get up close and see just how far off level our basement floor was.

This board is resting with the left end on the original floor in the basement, and the right side is on the new "level" floor for the shower. There is a gap of about 2" from one side to the other.

Once the concrete was dry, it was time to bring the hard-won shower parts down to the basement. Unfortunately, our stairwell was about 1" too small, thus requiring the removal of the basement stairs in order to get it down. Unfortunately, this was also the day that my dishwasher drain froze, making a mess in the kitchen where the basement door is. Fortunately, we found out that the subfloor on the landing at the top of the stairs was completely rotted, so we could replace it before someone fell through.

Here you can see our stairs being reinstalled:

We had to temporarily lean them up against a ladder while the lowering of the shower parts went on. Once we reinstalled them, they are now actually straight, rather than drunkenly leaning towards the basement.

After a few more adventures to find a shower head and faucet that worked together in our space, we have a shower!


Other than the fact that the shower is located in the unfinished basement, it is quite a nice shower. Much bigger than our old one. But then again, the old bathroom had a strip of vinyl flooring that was only 36" wide, and the old vanity cabinet took up some of that space.


Yay, a shower!

Oops! We needed that?

In every project, there are somethings that seem to happen just to keep you on your toes. In our case, just as in every other, this has happened. The day started out so well, too. Seeing as it was MLK, Jr Day, we had an extra pair of hands to help as one of our friends had the day off of work. He likes helping us out, as he lives in a condo, so comes over to practice the manly arts of home de- and re- construction on our house rather than his. It is much more adventurous.

The main goal of the day was to get everything set in the morning to be able to blow insulation down into the wall cavities on the first floor. This requires several bales of insulation and a large mixer/blower machine with many, many, many feet of hose. The machine takes the bales of insulation and fluffs them up and then spits them out the hose into wherever you want it to go.

In our case, due to the weight of the fluffer machine, we left it outside and fed the hose up to thru a second floor window. In most cases, one might be concerned about all the cold air coming in the window. In our case, this concern is not necessary, seeing as we have had no insulation up until now.

As part of the prep work, we needed to make sure we could shoot the insulation down the wall cavities as easily as possible. It turned out that those who built the house just left all the floorboards end where they ended, rather than cut them off nice and neat. This makes it hard to get the insulation down the wall. We are the proud possessors of a SawzAll, and it does indeed, as we found out later, Sawz All. We used this magical tool to cut off our floorboards nice and neat and even.


Down the insulation went, causing a very large dustcloud, very dusty people, and a Very Dusty Room.The insulation went in quite easily and quickly. This should have been a clue.


It wasn't until later that the problem came up. As it began to get dark outside, the need arose for me to turn on some lights. The easiest lights to turn on are often those overhead. Flip, went the switch in the kitchen. Nothing. Hmmm, maybe the guys flipped a breaker while doing something upstairs. Down the stairs I went, and over to the breaker box. All breakers are "On". Back up the stairs. Let's try some more lights.

Den = nope. Kitchen = nope. Living room = nope. Front porch = nope. Dining room = nope. Hmmm, this does not bode well. Let's try again. This time I managed to find a combination of switch positions that did indeed make the dining room lights turn on, the living room lights glow with orange mood lighting, and the front porch lights glow very faintly and flicker. This REALLY does not bode well. Back down the stairs again. Nope, breakers are still on.
All the outlets work, as do the lights and outlets in the upstairs where the project is taking place. Now onto some detective work. Meanwhile, the sky is getting darker outside, limiting the amount of light coming in the windows. After peering about in the basement and following wires strung hither and yon, and peering again down the wall cavities, this time after scooping out the fluff, we discover that apparently a wire has been cut. The wire that goes to ALL of the overhead lights on the entire first floor. What it is doing in the second floor, I'm still not completely clear about.

Time to call the electrician. They can come out tomorrow and fix this. And, as long as they are at it, I'm going to have them move the smoke detector in the bedroom, as it is currently located directly over the bed, and that little red light blinks all night long! Maybe they can put it by the door.

Surprise! What else can I find?

Well, week 2 of the Theory of Chaos Project (aka Me and My Bathroom) started out ok. I now have the shower actually on-site in its entirety. Not assembled yet, but at least in the general area. Which is more than was possible this last weekend.

In other news, there have been more adventures of the type Surprise. As mentioned earlier, we have no insulation apparently anywhere in the house. For certain in the Master Bedroom, but now also there is no insulation in the Bedroom-that-shall-be-Two-Baths.

If you look closely, or click and make the picture bigger, you can see all the way down past the first floor to the foundation wall of the house. I was kneeling on the second floor with my head down the stud cavity. I also found out if you are not very careful when poking around in the wall, you can poke yourself with the sharp ends of the nails that hold the siding on. They really do stick all the way through the walls of the house! Good thing my tetanus shot is up-to-date.


In addition, there were also random wires-going-to-nowhere located behind the plaster in the open wall cavities.


As part of the project, we pulled up the carpet in this room. It was old and dingy and was actually the only room in the house with any carpet in it, so I'm pretty happy to get rid of it. We did find out, however, why the previous owners had laid the carpet. Here's what the flooring was underneath:

This was supposed to be a bedroom! Not a kitchen or den or basement! How dark and ugly can you get for a bedroom?!

The look of this room was enhanced even more when we pulled off the drywall from where the heat vent goes. We found out that the enclosure was about 2x the size that it needed to be. This is good news indeed - as we have the same bumpout in our den below and it takes up WAY too much space.

A closer look at the area where the heat vent is revealed some very 80s wallpaper. Pastel and seashells.
Imagine this coupled with that dark vinyl flooring. What a treat that room would've been to sleep in! This, however, was not the end of the surprises for the week. Oh no. Of course not. What was next discovered was that at some point an addition had been put onto the first floor. When this was done, the ceiling in the den was lowered about 16" from all of the rest of the house.


So, on the positive side, there will be plenty of space to run the plumbing and electrical in the Bedroom-that-shall-be-Two-Baths. On the negative side, when this addition was done, the doers just cut through the floor joists on the second floor as well as through the vertical studs on the side of the house. This means that apparently our 2nd floor has been hanging in space for some years now, held up only by the wonder that is "structural" plaster & lathe.

What next?

Please, can I buy a Shower?

Please, oh please, can I just buy a shower? The kind that has a floor with a drain, and at least 3 walls? I don't care if it has a door or if it requires a curtain. Any shower will do, as long as it's 36"x36".

This, my friends, is no easy undertaking. Little did I know what I was in for when off I went to my local Do-It-Oneself big box store. In fact, I went to 2 such places. What I found was, that apparently one cannot buy a shower such as described above. Oh, no, that would be way too easy.

Nope, one can buy any of the following:
- a floor containing a drain that fits a shower, no walls or doors
- a floor and some doors for a shower, but no walls
- walls for a shower, but no floor or doors

But, one can NOT buy a complete shower! Craziness! Who on earth would try to buy one of those other combinations? Who, indeed?

And of course, everything comes with its own dimensions. Apparently one has to have lots of patience and an aptitude for puzzles in order to buy and assemble a shower.

After having help from the entire Bath & Plumbing department, 1 person from Electrical, and 1/2 the Millwork department, I managed to assemble all of the parts in their boxes to complete the Shower Puzzle at home. It only took me about 4 hours.

Now it was off to the cash register to pay, and then I needed help loading the parts into my truck. I had a truck, the type with a nice-sized bed and even a topper. I thought that this would handle my shower purchase just fine.

Nope, fooled again! It was just part of the conspiracy that is against People Buying Showers. Now the floor of the shower fit into the truck bed just fine. It was the walls that were the problem. In their box, the walls were 1" too large to fit into the truck - even when placed on a diagonal! ARGHH!!!

Back into the store I go with my giant puzzle pieces, this time to the service counter. Here they said, that even though I had already paid for my pieces, I only had until 2pm on Monday to pick them up. What could I do but say OK? Back home I went with my shower floor, to wait until Monday.

At least our contractor is related to us, so he didn't mind using his much larger truck to go and pick up the walls of the shower on his way home to bring back to the house the next day.

After all of this, I really need glass of wine to recover!

Theory of Chaos

My basic theory on Chaos is, that apparently I have a very hard time avoiding it. I seem to go from one chaotic undertaking to the next. The current form Chaos is taking in my household is in the form of renovation. A major undertaking has been started in the last few days - going from a 4 bedroom, 1.25 bath house to a 3 bedroom, 2.25+ bath house. Lots of noise, dust, and debris everywhere. Not to mention having to pack furniture for 4 bedrooms into 2 for a bit. The goal is to have a fully functioning clean house in 3 months. We'll have to see if we get there.

Day 0.5 (Wednesday)We found out today that our remodel was starting the next morning at 9am. This meant that we needed to deconstruct the 2 bedrooms that we are starting with, and also pull off the old acoustic ceiling tiles in the master bedroom. The deconstruction went off with no major hitches - finished in a few hours. The removal of the ceiling tiles took about 1 hour, as they were starting to fall off of the ceiling on their own prior to this project.

Day 1 (Thursday)
Today was a day of surprises. This should be expected, seeing as the house had its 100th birthday in 2008.

It began with having the dumpster delivered at 7am! The service had said that we should be expecting it before noon. We were thinking that this meant closer to noon, as these types of statements usually do. Not so. At 7am, the phone rings, and there is a man with a truck holding a giant dumpster sitting in our street. We need to get the cars out of the driveway so that the dumpster can be put in. Now we are truly awake.

The next surprise was hiding in the walls of the master bedroom. Or maybe I should say not in the walls. The bedroom has always been a bit chilly, as has the entire 2nd floor. When a hole was made in the plaster of one of the exterior walls, we found just air - no insulation!! In fact, there is no insulation in ANY of the exterior walls! This explains alot.


After poking a head and a flashlight to look down between the wall studs, we find out that our house is of rather unusual construction - a style called "Balloon Framing". This means that there is an open cavity from the roof all the way down to the foundation in the exterior walls. So, over the last 100 years, our insulation (being of the old cellulose type) has fallen and compressed itself such that it only insulates to about 1ft below the ceiling of the first floor.


Day 2 (Friday)
Today it was time to finish removal of any leftover wall parts, and also the baseboard trim. The bedroom got vacuumed, swept, and then swept again to get up all the plaster. The initial insulation was stuck in for the weekend, but we will have to get a big insulation blower to fill all the cavities down to the first floor. That will be for next week.


We also had a rather sizable hole pounded into the concrete in the basement. Our basement, such as it is, has no drain. Generally not a problem. Unless one's Small Town happens to get 2-100yr rains in under a week. This causes EVERYONE to have a flooded basement. Not a problem if you have a floor drain! BIG problem if not. This happened to us this past summer. It is an experience I do not wish to repeat.


We have had the hole put into the floor in order to put in a drain. And a shower. When doing a bathroom remodel, it is good to have a backup plan for cleanliness.

This new drain will also let me have a laundry sink. This is something you don't realize you use frequently until you cannot use it. Now I have to fill the bathtub in order to wash something quite small - like a pair of my mittens.

Tomorrow's Task: Purchase a 36"x36" shower. Complete with bottom, sides, drain, rod, curtain, and shelf for soap. And figure out how to get it home and in the basement.