A cautionary tale about "small" home improvement projects
If you give your wife permission to paint the bathroom orange...
Before:
She will ask what it would take to trade the dated vanity for the pedestal sink in your basement.
If you tell her you can swap the sinks, but you'll need to change the flooring because the
She will google search and fall in love with a glass tile floor.
If you buy her the glass tiles, mortar, grout, and all the corresponding tools...
You will both get so excited that you will immediately start tearing out the old floor.
If you start tearing out the old floor...
You will fine one... two layers of vinyl...
Followed by a layer of luan on top of... A layer of original 1950s linoleum...
Plus a layer of plywood before you finally reach the subfloor
And you will get so ahead of yourself that you have to leave a section, or you would have to pull out the toilet and sink before you are really even ready to get started.
If, a few days later, you get everything together and tear out the toilet, sink, and the rest of the floor...
You will find the flange for the toilet is 1 1/2 inches above the subfloor and is plumbed with a lead extender from the cast iron drain, so you will have to call a plumber to get their input on the situation.
If you call the plumber and get the go ahead to just cut the lead to the appropriate level and reinstall the flange...
You will finally be able to start with the mortar and cement backerboard. Of couse you will only be able to start after you put the kids to bed and will have to stay up until approximately 1am.
If you lay the cement backerboard underlayer for your tile
Your project will be ready for your wife to paint the bathroom.
If your toilet and sink are removed, layer of flooring is in but not finished, and your wife finishes painting the bathroom...
If you call plumbers on a Friday to come check out your rough in...
They will tell you they cannot come out until Monday, so you will decide to go ahead and lay the glass tile floor.
If you lay the glass tile floor on Saturday and then grout on Sunday giving the appropriate curing times...
If the plumber comes on Tuesday to check out the rough ins...
He will tell you that the supply lines are copper, which is good, but the drain pipe is lead and not only would be impossible to move without replacing, but also should probably be replaced anyway because it will fail at some point.
If you ask what replacing the drain pipe entails...
He will tell you he will have to plumb over to the cast iron drain stack that runs behind the toilet which requires extensive work and will cost a few hundred dollars, essentially doubling the cost of your "small" project.
If you talk with your wife for a few days about the bathroom plumbing situation...
You will both decide that you would rather avoid a leak in the future so you will open up almost an entire wall so that you can call and schedule the plumber.
If you finally schedule the plumber to come a week and a half after originally checking out the rough ins to repair your bathroom plumbing ...
You will have to make a useable bathroom out of three rooms in your house: the still useable bathtub in this room, the downstairs for toilet, and the kitchen for the sink.
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| Kitchen stuff+Bathroom stuff+Construction stuff= Disorganized mess |
You will also get curious about the rest of the bathroom plumbing and decide to open up the wall in the bathroom directly under your project so you can see where ALL the drains go.
If you open up all these walls to see what is going on with the plumbing...
The plumber will discover a way to plumb the new drain and fix all the other bathroom plumbing (and a leak in another pipe pro-bono), all for the same price as the original plan! (Hey, celebrate the small victories) You will also find that the culprit lead drain pipe already has a hairline crack at a bend and was slightly leaking, which makes you feel slightly better about the whole fiasco.
If the old, out-of-date plumbing gets repaired with shiny, new copper and PVC...
You will finally be ready to put the bathroom back together again and decide that since you've already torn out the whole wall you might as well replace the old, rusty,medicine cabinet/light fixture too.
If you prepare the wiring to install the new light fixture...
You will mistake a live wire for a ground wire and electrify the entire chrome fixture so that when you are measuring from the top of the wall to the copper pipes to cut the drywall you will ground the new circuit and zap yourself...three times...before taking the light fixture down.
If your wife calls her Dad for help the next morning who comes over to take a look, and then calls his electrician friend for help...
You will discover your error with the help of a voltimeter and be able to move forward, put up new drywall, tape and mud, have your wife repaint the wall, and move onto "finish" work.
If you want to replace missing tiles in the wall, install baseboard and shoe, recaulk and regrout sections of the bathtub, caulk around the bottom of the wall and floor, put up the new light and mirror, and reinstall the sink and toilet on a Monday and hope to be pretty much done for your wifes birthing class on Tuesday...
Your wife will work her fingers to the bone all day scraping old caulk and grout out from around the tub and you will both be up until all hours of the night trying to get the above list done (hey, we didn't write it all out and think about how extensive the list actually was...it was just supposed to be "finish" work)
If you try to get all the above work done by staying up until all hours of the night...
You will get to the point of installing the toilet, the tank will leak, your wife will cry, and you will crawl into bed defeated at 5am.
If you get defeated after staying up all night but still have half of the "finish" work left to do...
You will pretty much end up taking the day off in order to fix the toilet tank leak (turns out the new seal kit was a peice of sh** and our wonderful plumber, Greg, gave us a new one because he was just around the corner on another job), put in the sink, and put up the light and mirror.
If you want to reinstall the pedestal sink with pretty chrome pipes and decide to dry fit everything so you will know what you are doing before you mount it on the wall...
It will take a couple hours just to mount the sink on the pedestal and you will find that you cut one supply pipe too short and that the other supply line and the drain are leaking.
If you pick up the supplies for a new supply line and to fix the leaks...
You will stay up until 1 am that night trying to get the new supply line properly installed without leaks in the extremely cramped space behind the pedestal sink.
If you get the toilet, sink, and shower up and running again, your walls painted, and ready to finish up the cabinet...
You will discover the small patch peice you'd planned for the bottom of the door casing won't work because the old profile doesn't match so you will have to replace the entire thing...adding an extra full day to the project, necessitating more paint touch ups, and seriously irritating your wife.
If you patch things up, in the bathroom and with your wife, and finally finish "painting" your bathroom...
Your wife will be so happy with the result that she will ask to paint the kitchen ;-)
3 comments:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I love it! Good luck with that kitchen... just remember you can't cook a chicken in your bathroom ;o)
If you give a mouse a cookie...
I love your story! It sounds like it was really, really, REALLY trying... but the after pictures are AMAZING! I'm so impressed!!!
When the bathroom was finished, it looked lovely, especially those ducks. Quack! Quack! Hahaha! The plumbing work was neatly done. Give your plumber a pat on the back!
Dwane Zelinsky
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