Can Do Gal

A twist and shout… for hardwood

March 5th, 2011
Posted by candogal
11

There’s nothing like a good ankle sprain to put a screeching halt to a bathroom project. You’re probably thinking that the drywall fought back or something along those lines, but no. I simply tripped over my own two feet.

As usual, I was running late during my weekday morning frenzy. Man, I am not a morning person. I was maybe 25 feet from my front door when I took a bad step, landed on my ankle, heard a pop, and got acquainted with the lawn, face first. The ankle brace is mandatory for a month. Now all there is to do is make my way through the pile-up of magazines, catch up on American Idol and internet shop. A grand time to buy some hardwood.

The flooring came in, and for now, I can only admire it from afar. So be it, since it needs to sit around for days anyway, to absorb the moisture level of the house.

It’s a 3 1/4 inch slat in a natural maple, pre-finished, and handsome indeed. I’m very happy with the pale hue, and thickness of the plank. I think it will work well against a deep gray, white and dark brown scheme.

At first, I was hesitant about a pale floor. It seems like dark floors are the fashion. But all my doubts went out the window when I saw this gorgeous bathroom wearing the look I was after.

image from here

Again, the best price was to be found online, where there is no store-front to support, even when shipping charges are accounted for. Here’s the source. Three cases (75 square feet) came in at $450, as opposed to the $650 I got quoted for the EXACT SAME FLOOR at my nearby floor store. It showed up fast, too. It was here in 3 days from the time I clicked “place order.”

I’m a little annoyed that I only need about 50 square feet, with a 10% surplus for irregularities, forcing me to buy that third case. That’s $100 bucks worth of floor I don’t really need. I wonder if I can sell it or unload it somehow.

For now, I’ll sit here, watch my butt grow, and read the instructions printed on the back of the box.

Hope all your projects are going well.

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Filed Under: bathroom, flooring, home project

when you bite off more than you can chew…

February 17th, 2011
Posted by candogal
9

…why not take another bite?

If you’ve been with me up till now, you know that I’ve been blindly remodeling my half bath. I dove right in, with the recklessness of an acid tripper believing she can fly. So far, it’s been gutted and plumbed and the “Two T’s” are waiting for me: Tile and Toilet. I finally mustered up the balls to go buy all the drywall equipment, even though something as simple as choosing screws put the fear of god into me. I even had to trick Scott with promises of hoagies, to get him to drive the rented van that Home Depot provides.

Here is the drywall and the cement board for the tiled wall. Like immigrants fresh off the boat, they needed time to acclimate to their new home. They sat here for 3 days absorbing the room’s temperature.

Just as I was getting ready with that first sheet, something started nagging at me. The floor. Or rather, three floors. Why are there three types of flooring within 6 feet of each other, pray tell? Yes, good people, it doesn’t make any sense to me either.

So what did I do? That’s right. I put off the drywall some more. I went to town on that square tile. Of all the ways I tried to pop it off, I found the easiest thing to do was simply smash it. Like it did me wrong. Which it did. Cuz it looked at me funny.

In about an hour, it looked like the sky fell in.

I swept up the shards, and now had my blank canvas. I’m going to simply extend the blonde wood flooring into the hall, which will add a few bucks to my floor cost.

There was a lot of debris in all the nooks and crannies. I rolled on over to Home Depot to rent a Shop-Vac, the mother of all vacuums.

The lady manning the counter told me none were available, so I am now the proud owner of a $50 model. Is this how they get you to buy stuff? It took me an embarrassingly long time to assemble the thing.

It’s one powerful monkey! It almost pulled the fillings out of my teeth. Why doesn’t everyone use these instead of the regular ol’ vacuums for their house?

Ok, now I can do the drywall. Or can I? What about this dangling electrical box?

I’ve been meaning to change it into a GFCI outlet. Back to Home Depot I went. If you’re paying close attention, you’ll see that so far, I spent half the day on vacuuming and shopping at Home Depot. Oh, hours, where do you go!

It was also a mystery as to how to deal with a dangling box (sounds like slang for….something). Looks like a crash course in electric wiring is about to commence. I purchased another box that looked like it could get screwed to the side of the stud. But, ugh, wrong size. The wood behind it displaced it forward too much.

Another trip to Home Depot seemed as appealing as eating rotten eggs. It was time to “Tim Gunn” it and make it work.

I screwed the back into the wood behind it, all the while wondering why the original person didn’t do that. I have since learned that this style of electrical box is only used when there is no open wall, and it can be slid right into a drywall hole.

Between this video, and the instructions that came with the outlets, I was easily able to install both the GFCI outlet, and the on/off switch. I only had 3 wires to work with because this was the last stop of the power line, but if you have more than 4 wires, you may want to watch this video.

I was pretty impressed with mah bad self.

Now, NOW, I was ready for that drywall. If you’ve been smelling procrastination, you’d be right.

I should preface this by saying I’ve been reading up on how to do this during my work commute. I read 2 books on the subject.

1. Drywall: Professional Techniques for Great Results

and

2. Complete Drywall (Stanley Complete)

The first one was so detailed, and comprehensive, it was like reading a drywall tell-all. The second was a reinforcement of all I had learned, and showed some additional pics of the how-to’s. I did feel well armed with the right info to get the job done right. Now all I needed was the benefit of experience.

First, a quick check to see if the studs are all lined up. They all appear to be flush against the level.

I shimmied the first piece of drywall toward the bathroom. I angled and pushed, and the thing would not fit through the door. I called in my backup, aka Scott, and he confirmed that I’m not a total spacial dolt — it truly wouldn’t fit.

Mo-fo! I specifically gutted the place to avoid seams, and now I was going to have seams up the wazoo. Such is life.

Cutting was easy. I measured, I scored.

I snapped it against my knee, and cut the other side free.

Then I propped it up against the studs, and with gritted teeth, drove the first screw through.

According to the experts, it’s important for the screws to stop just below the surface of the drywall, making just a dimple, without actually breaking the surface paper, otherwise the screw may be weak and “pop” later on. Um, some areas got away from me, especially around the corners.

When that happens, the right thing to do is get another screw in, a couple of inches away.

After a few hit-and-miss screws, I had my first piece of drywall up! Yay me!

Now that I’m looking at it, I’m thinking I could add a few more screws.

Anyway, I was gearing up to start the awful cement board installation on the other side of the wall. I say awful because those bastards are heavy. That’s probably why they come in small pieces. I popped open the box of special screws designed just for that purpose, and only then noticed they required different bits. The screw on the left is the square-bit-loving cement board screw.

I couldn’t bear another trip to Home Depot today, so time to take a nap.

Do you guys ever feel like utter brain mush when doing these sorts of projects? Do you just plow through anyway? Learn everything you can about it beforehand?

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Filed Under: bathroom, home project, home repair, renovation

gettin’ dem pipes cleaned

February 5th, 2011
Posted by candogal
3

After a long wait, the plumbing’s finally in. This wasn’t a job I was prepared to tackle myself, what with all the rerouting and setting angles to code, so I called in the Water Guns. The pros. Am I glad I did.

Much to my surprise, 2 guys showed up. I wouldn’t have thought this was a 2-man job. Once they got started, I heard sounds that were as foreign to me as a Magpie’s bird calls: lots of welding and sawing. I most certainly would have botched that one. They added wooden slats to support the sink’s bowl, and roughed in the correct pipes for the narrow pedestal. I was bummed to learn that the hot and cold supply valves would be visible, but it does make sense to have easy access to them in the future. It’s that same dang argument of form vs function.

On the other hand, the Porcher photo of the sink shows no visible valves, so WTF?

Anyway, the plumbing project is estimated at $585, a whopping $185 more than I jotted down in my original budget plan. Granted, I took a wild guess then, but the prices I get quoted for this sort of stuff keep shocking me.

Before we found these guys, again on Angie’s List, we got several other estimates:

1. For the first estimate I was curious to see what it would cost for more than just the plumbing. I called in the same dude that did my brother’s dental office remodel, and asked for a number that would include the plumbling, changing the outlet to GFCI, and routing in a light for the adjoining closet, installing the 4 panels of drywall, popping in the trim, and getting in some new doors to replace the 3 doors in that immediate vicinity. I asked him NOT to include, the tiling, painting, and floor installation. I nearly dropped my donut when his email came in. Wait for it… wait for it… $5800!!!! For a half bath! There’s not even a tub! And not even for the complete job! Were the new doors going to be gold-encrusted? Would the drywall have some sort of diamond technology? How can it be so much? If I’d go with him, this half bath would end up costing 10 thou, a sum to make the angels weep.

2. Once it became clear that I would, indeed, be doing most of the work myself, I called in a local company that quoted $700 for just the plumbing.

3. I also called the fella who hooked up our dryer, but since he lives about an hour’s drive from here, he didn’t want to make the trip for a quote unless I was willing to have him do the work right then, once we agreed on a price. He did say the second part of the installation, where he’d hook up the toilet and hang the sink, would be $350. I didn’t want to be stuck in a situation where I was forced to hire someone on the spot, so that was a no go.

4. And, of course, the last estimate was the one above for $585, from Visentin Plumbing in North Jersey. So far so good with them, though I’ll have a more thorough assessment when they’re fully done.

They’ll install the appliances once the walls and floor are all set.

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Filed Under: bathroom, home project, renovation

a whole new world

February 1st, 2011
Posted by candogal
4

Look at this this. It’s like somethings from the depths of hell. A murky, gray, filthy, evil cloud. Like spilled, cremated ashes.

It caused weeks of sneezing and suffering. Congested nasal passages. Waking in the middle of the night, gasping for air. Death of small animals (ok, maybe not the last one.) What on god’s green earth is it?

It’s the filter to the central air system.

And it’s anybody’s guess as to when it was last replaced. Maybe around the time I was playing with My Little Pony.

After identifying the offending object that was putting us in a choke-hold, a new one went in, in the blink of an eye. Right in the slot, like a quarter in Vegas.

Breath deep, Young Lad, breath deep.

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Filed Under: home project

Day Stripper

January 28th, 2011
Posted by candogal
8

The title of this post will probably attract spam comments that would make Hugh Hefner blush, but I can’t help myself. I did do some stripping.

Wallpaper. I’m talking wallpaper. While helplessly and impatiently waiting to coordinate the plumber’s rotten schedule with mine, I decided that twiddling my thumbs wasn’t a good use of time.

On one of our many recent snow days, I attacked those pink birds like I had a score to settle. Pink birds floating through the pink clouds. Some kind of bubble-gum nightmare, me thinks.

As per usual, I’ve never torn down wall-paper before, so I consulted the all-knowing google. It led me to:

THIS VIDEO

Man I love it when info is spoon-fed to me.

Firstly, I got the wallplates off. Someone actually took the time to wrap them in this wallpaper. And, wow, they even matched the pattern for perfect seamlessness.

Oh, and the heating grills.

Then I twirled around like a paper ripping lunatic. Since the “paper” was more vinyl than paper, the top layer came off in big, happy sheets.

Holey! Where’d THAT come from?

This came down in a jiffy, maybe an hour.

Too bad the backing didn’t come off with it. This called for some garden sprayer spraying. But first I spread out the tarp to catch the water that might otherwise damage the floor.

And tape off the outlets so water doesn’t drip in. All part of my “avoiding death” plan.

The back and forth spraying action makes me I feel like I’m spraying for bugs. Kind of fun, actually. After a minute of waiting, the paper should be well saturated.

Then comes the eyeballs-rolling-to-the-back-of-your-head tedious labor.

Scrape.

Scrape some more. It worked with just water. No chemical aids necessary in this case.

I try to ignore the ironic fact that the lavender paint and spackled patches underneath look a lot like the wallpaper I just pulled off.

Better put on some music. This is gonna take a while. At least it’s working.

Six hours, 3 garbage bags, and one cramped claw-hand later, I’ve got this.

Glad that’s done, even though the room looks like it came down with chicken pox. Now what color paint says “exercise”?

Here’s all the stuff I got to do the project, in case you want to do it, too. Did I end up needing it all? Nope. But I was boy scout-level prepared.

1. Garden Sprayer — well worth it. Made the soaking of the paper go much faster.

2. PaperTiger Scoring Tool — I really wanted to avoid using this. One of our bathrooms has wall pocks all over it, and it’s obvious someone was once over-zealous with one of these. In the end, I didn’t need it and it went back. Of course, it depends on how stubborn your wallpaper is.

3. Plastic Drop Cloths, 9′ x 12′ — good for catching water and chemical drippings.

4. Protective Goggles — Why did I think I needed these? Really unnecessary for this project, but I kept them for the tile chipping.

5. Rubber Gloves — Essential. I don’t know about you, but the sensation of being sticky makes me want to dip myself in acetone. And this soaked-up wallpaper goo could catch flies.

6. Blue Tape — Needed to tape off the outlets, so water doesn’t seep in there.

7. Particle Mask — Talk about overkill in this case. Since I only used water to soak the paper, these were extraneous, but if you use the chemical stuff, these may help save some brain cells.

8. Wall Metal Scraper — I used what appears to be a 6″ taping knife. It worked wonders, and I’m glad I got the metal one, and not the plastic one, because I can tell the plastic one wouldn’t have been up for the job.

9. Dif Wallpaper Stripper Gel — The hardware store guy recommended this one, and I would have used it if I had to, but luckily, the wallpaper came off with just water and I took it back.

The whole undertaking cost me about 50 bucks and about 9 hours spread over two days. And since it’s the only wallpapered room in the house, I can bid this project adieu.

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Filed Under: home project, renovation