Plumbing nightmares

The complete remodel of the half bathroom has been a great challenge and learning experience. Needless to say I am not ready to quit my day job, but there is something satisfying about doing the work yourself. Many of our friends and family always seem to have complaints about how a contractor did a job differently from what they were asked to do. It is this very reason that we have decided to do many of our home improvement projects ourselves.

The biggest plumbing problem with the half bathroom prior to the remodel was the cast-iron radiator. This thing was old, rusty, smelly and unsightly. Removing it was a gift and a curse. Once it was removed we gained significant space in the room but then we were left to install a new heating element. Since the whole house has baseboard heat with force-hot-water, we decided to replace the big heavy radiator with a small 2 foot section of baseboard heating element with the small aluminum plates. This heating element takes up little space and can provide a good heat source for a small area.

After we installed all of the bead board, trim and baseboard; the toilet (which took 2 tries to get right) and the sink(which took a day to figure out. Pedestal sinks are trickier than you think) it was time to tackle the heat. There is one thing that I had wished I had not done for the heating. When we installed the floor I decided to drill holes for the heating pipes, where they originally were, prior to polyurethaning the floor. The theory was that we would work around the heating element, but when it came time to put the heating system together it became clear that the original setup was poorly executed and difficult to work with.

It took me a good day to figure out how I would get the pipes installed without burning the house down. The main problem is that the heating pipe actually comes out of a small whole in the wall which is not big enough work in and definitely not safe enough to sweat (solder) copper connections. Because of this space constraint I was forced to put together as much of the heating pipes so that I would only have to solder a few connections in the basement and avoid the dangerous hole in the wall. Because of my work schedule I had to do this work over the span of a few days and each night I would have anxiety dreams about plumbing. If you have every seen the screen saver that has the pipes running in all different directions and multiplying at an alarming rate, image dreaming that with a real project which you have to wake up to and deal with.

After much preparation I had decided to go ahead and put together the heating system once and for all. I started working at about 6pm and finished at about 12:30am. After sweating many connections, running out of solder, making a trip to Lowes just minutes before they closed to get more solder, and finishing the remaining connections, the heating system was finally ready to be tested. In my excitement I turned up the thermostat and waited for heat to come, but it never did. At 1:30am I gave up and went to bed. I still had the plumbing nightmare that night which was unsettling because I had just worked so hard to get the job done.

In the morning I gave the heating system another test and within minutes I heard the unmistakable hiss of water leaking out of a faulty connection. To my dismay it was in the one spot that I could not fix easily. It was a disappointing moment and for the first time I felt like I could have paid someone to deal with the problem and be done with it, but I knew that I could fix it myself. To fix the problem I had to take apart about 50% of the work I had done the night before and go out and buy some special copper fittings that do not require solder. These fittings push together and hold tight. I decided to go with this system because I could not image re-sweating connections only to have another leak.

The new system finally works without any leaks, yet I am still haunted by plumbing nightmares...I think it will be some time before we tackle another plumbing project!

About the duct tape...

My friend Brittney has questioned the duct tape on the toilet in my "before pictures" twice and though the reason its there is not super interesting, I decided she was owed an explanation ;)

So, when we bought our house it had been on the market for a LOOOOONG time. It was also a foreclosure. Because it costs so much to heat a house in the winter in MA, not to mention the risk of burst pipes, owners who do not occupy the house often "winterize" it which means they drain all the pipes of water so they cannot freeze. This was the case with our house because it was bank owned and had been vacant for so long.

The plumbers put these bright orange stickers all over the house warning that it has been winterized and they duct tape the toilets. I believe this is done primarily to make sure that any squatters looking to live in the house temporarily know the water isn't working. I am not sure if duct tape would seriously stop me from using a toilet if I were a squatter but who knows!

So, Brittney, now you are in the know about the duct tape :)

Also, thanks for your compliments on the house - you are always so very sweet!

Picture Post

I thought instead of actually describing the step by step of our remodel, I would let the pictures do the talking!

And stay tuned for Eric's very first post...it's currently a draft waiting for publication :)

Before Picture

Before Picture

Eric ripping it all out!
Remember "Sub Floor Secrets"?

Installing some new sub floors

Me installing the new floor!

Ok...Eric helped a little when my belly got in the way :)

It's electric!

The bead board installed
Even Tiger wanted to help :)

After picture!
After picture!
After picture!
After picture!
After picture!

INTERESTING DISCOVERY!

While tearing out the back side of the half bath wall to remove the stinky insulation, we made an interesting discovery:



OUR HOUSE USED TO BE PAINTED PINK!!! The wall we opened up is where our house originally ended and where a very poorly executed side addition begins. I guess now I understand why subsequent owners covered the house in not 1 but 2 layers of tan vinyl siding!

A Mystery Smell No Longer!

The whole point of the half bathroom remodel was to rid that room of a terrible urine stench that we could not eradicate through less drastic means. We had tried EVERYTHING we could think of and yet the smell remained, so in our minds, the only fix was to rip out all the floors, radiator and the lower portion of the walls, paint the walls and floor joists with BIN and hope for the best.

Well after doing all this and installing the new hardwood floors we felt confident the project was a success. Not only would we have a beautiful new bathroom, but we would have accomplished our primary goal of eliminating the smell for good.

It didn't take long before we realized that though the smell was almost undetectable, it was still there. While sitting up close to the wall while installing the bead board, I caught a whiff and knew we had a problem. Eric and I couldn't imagine what else we could even do to fix it after removing the floors, sub floors, parts of the walls AND sealing the entire room. What could the source of the smell be? Where was it coming from?

I sniffed the whole room and finally found a place where the smell was the strongest. It was right by a hole in the wall that was left for the plumbing. At first I was sure it was the pipes that smelled, but Eric noticed that there was old fiberglass insulation surrounding that area in the wall. When removed we realized that IT WAS THE INSULATION THAT SMELLED! There had been some in between layers in the sub floor and it was in behind the walls on one side of the bathroom - the side that smelled.

We really couldn't believe that the insulation had been causing the problem all along. Since when does insulation smell like urine? We googled it and interestingly enough, this problem is more common than one might think! Here is just one of the many examples that we came across:
http://www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=toolt&th=216180

After ripping it all out the smell is finally gone! But I am still in disbelief over the cause.