Put in some nice clean sheets of Sheetrock today.    We are going to be tiling this area, however since its considered a “dry area” its ok to put the tile right onto Sheetrock, instead of having to put up Durock.   I used only one piece for each wall, which made getting the 8ft long piece into the room, and upright a bit tricky, but the lack of a horizontal seem should make life easier.  I also learned that its a much better idea to cut the rock a little short and then spackle the corners (which you have to do anyway) than it is to try and cut it exactly and end up with it being a tiny bit to big in one spot.   If its just a bit to big you either have to pull it out and cut it a bit bigger, or attempt to cut it in place.  If you try to force it (which of course I did) you end up breaking a big chunk off and ripping the paper.  Not a good result.   It should be hidden under the tile though so it won’t matter in the end.  I learned my lesson and the next piece went up easily and fit well. 

After much deliberation I went ahead and did the piping for the sink today.  The big problem was the drain piping.  The vanity we have has drawers on one side, which would have gotten in the way of the drain pipe where it was, so I had to move it to the left a few inches.  Using a torch I was able to twist the copper T so that it was pointed correctly.  My plan was then to put some copper in, put an elbow on it, and bring it out, nice and easy.   Probably would have worked quite well too, except for the problem that Lowes only had a 10ft piece of 1″1/4 copper pipe, and it was $80 bucks.  Through on top of that the 10$ elbow, and the 5$ threaded adapter, and I was looking at almost $100 just to move a pipe a few inches.  That seemed ridiculous so after a few days of thinking about it with my wife we came up with this solution.  I used a flexible rubber fitting to go from the copper T to a PVC elbow, and then put a nice piece of PVC sticking out.  Ended up only costing about $10, much more reasonable.  I’m not real thrilled with the flexible adapter, but the price is right, and since its on the drain and is easily accessible from the other side if something goes wrong, I figured I’d live with it.

We added a ceiling light to the bathroom,  it was originally going to be a heat lamp, however we changed our mind and instead just made it a regular light after realizing that the lights over the medicine cabinet wouldn’t put out enough light.  We also put in a fan, to try and minimize the amount of moisture in the bathroom, and hopefully prevent the growth of mold and mildew.  We tried to get the quietest fan we could, however alot of the really quiet fans were quite large and I think would have looked silly in our small bathroom, so we ended up with this one which isn’t to loud, but certainly not ultra-silent.

Did some wiring today.  Got up as early as possible and crawled into the attic to install the fan and the recessed lighting over the bathroom.   For the fan, we’ve installed a timer switch so that you can just set it to 10 minutes or whatever after you finish your shower and it will shut itself off automatically.  It made the wiring a bit more complicated, but I think it will work out wonderfully later on.  I would have liked it to be near the door, however with two switches and an outlet already over there, there wasn’t enough room left for another one, so we put it next to the window instead.

Today I picked up our fancy new bathroom fixtures.  Well I should rephrase that, I went and picked up the medicine cabinet/mirror and the toilet, and then had to have a friend with a SUV come and get the vanity since it wouldn’t fit in my car :-/  got them home and I’m real happy with how they look.  I do have two concerns though, the lights over the mirror are not really that bright, so we may need to add another light to the bathroom.  My other concern is that the drain from the sink may interfere with he drawers that are in the right side of the vanity.  Looks like I’m gonna have to run the drain line a bit to one side so that there is room for it.

The nice man from Pella dropped off our new windows yesterday.   The window that was in the bathroom was an aluminum sliding window, that was out of square, extremely dirty and horribly energy efficient.  With all the walls ripped out of the bathroom it seemed like a good time to replace the windows, and while I was at it I figured I’d replace all the windows on the front of the house as well.  We picked out some nice Pella Architect series windows, in the traditional style for our house.  I was quite happy to realize today that I would get a $200 tax credit for the windows due to their energy efficientness.

After three trips to Lowes I managed to get the first one installed today.   Once I had the shingles off it was actually fairly easy to install.   Unfortuantly getting the shingles off was a royal pain.  The shingles are put up in an  overlapping fashion, such that to get one out you pretty much have to take off the entire wall.  I managed to pry most of them out after some difficulty, however I did managed to crack two of them.   I have a few spares that I could use to replace them, however I’ll probably hold off on that until I paint the house.  Due to my expert measuring skills (well mostly luck I’m sure) the window fit perfectly, and since the opening was fairly square and level shimming it was easy as well.  The fancy Pella Smartflash tape that I used to tie in the window with the vapor barrier on the house also made life quite easy as it stuck to everything and was easy to tear.  I’m very happy without the windows look, and they’re also nice and quiet as well.

I mixed up my deck mud, and protected my weep holes, now it was time to actually put down the floor.   I drew a couple guide lines on the walls, and adjusted the drain to the proper height so that I would get the specified 1/4″ per foot slope.  Then I dumped about half of the deck mud into the shower, and got to work, spreading it out and compacting it (using the top of a small sledge hammer) after I got the first half roughly down, I reinforced it with a piece of galvanized metal lathe, and dumped out the rest of the deck mud on top.  The second layer is much more work than the first, since the slope has to be close to perfect so that water actually goes down the drain, as this will be the layer that the tile goes on.  So after an hour or so of leveling, compacting, checking, and leveling I was finally happy with the end result.  I had my wife check and make sure that she couldn’t find any spots where the floor wasn’t sloped towards the drain, and after fixing the one spot she found, I was finished, with a very exhausted arm, after stamping down the mortar for an hour or two.  Happily after letting it dry overnight I was very happy with the result.

The shower drain is a surprisingly complex device consisting of three separate pieces.  the first piece goes under the shower liner, and actually attaches to the drain.  The next is a ring that clamps the liner down on top of first pieces so that no water can get underneath the liner.  This second piece also has a few ‘weep’ holes in it, which are very important, and allow any water that gets to the liner, to actually drain away, and not just be trapped by the third piece.  The third piece is what you actually see, and is threaded into the second and is adjustable in height to match the depth of your base and tile.

The weep holes need to be protected from the mortar, else they would clog and become worthless.  Typically this is done with some pea gravel, or some broken tile or tile spacers.  However when I was ordering my liner cornersI noticed that Noble has a Positive Weep Protector.  Since I didn’t have any pea gravel, or spare tile spacers, and the sharp edges of broken tile scared me, I decided that since it was only a couple of bucks I’d try this out.  Its just a piece of clear plastic, that has ridges in it which would allow any water to flow underneath the mortar and get to the weep holes.  Seems like a good idea, but since I couldn’t find anyone who knew anything about it, I figured just to be on the safe side I’d toss a few tile spacers on top of it, as some added protection.

Today I put down the second layer of deck mud (the first layer, the pre-slope,  goes under the liner) onto the shower floor.  This layer is constructed of a type of mortar that is called “dry-pack” mortar, or deck mud.  There seems to be alot of different opinions on just what this should consist of,  compounded by the fact that nobody seems to sell a pre-mixed deck mud product.  It also seems that there are alot of different things that will work, and they really just vary in how easy they are to get down.  If you use a mix that is too wet, you’ll have a hard time getting it to hold its shape.  If you use a mix that’s too strong, once it dries it will be impossible to knock out any lumps.  If you use a mix with to big an aggregate, you’ll end up with a lumpy floor, and if you use a mix with too much cement, it will shrink when it dries, and could crack. 

Therefore, the best mix is a ratio of 5 parts sand to 1 part cement, mixed to a fairly dry consistency similar to wet sand at the beach.  This won’t be a extremely strong product, but as its just going in the floor of your shower, it doesn’t need to be.  With the high amount of sand in it, it won’t shrink much as it dries, so you don’t have to worry about it cracking, and with just a dry mix its not too difficult to get the proper slope.  For more information, from a tiling expert, check out John Bridge’s page on Deck Mud.

We finally got to putting in some tile!  This is the first tile I’ve ever done, and doing the ceiling first was probaly not the best idea.  However it seemed to make the most sense, and so thats what we started with.  I’m quite happy with how it turned out, the grout lines look nice and even, and all the tiles are in line.  The only problem is that some of the tiles stick out a bit mroe than others do.  However since its the ceiling I don’t think this will really matter much, as its not to noticable unless you feel it.  I was quite proud of the hole I cut in the tiles for the light, I used the tile saw to nibble out a some what circular hole, and once the cover gets put on it will look perfect.