1810 Bath Remodel Part One - Demolition

The 1810 full bath remodel is now underway. I started removing fixtures and tearing out drywall Monday 11/16/09. The 1808 full bath remodel started in December of 07 and ended about 5 months later in April of 08. This time I'm shooting for 3 months :)

The picture above shows the bathroom before. There are 3 main issues driving the need to tear this all out. First, the bath fan is not vented anywhere so there is no way to remove moisture from the bathroom which leads to mold and mildew. Second, the wash cloth bar broke off of the shower enclosure leaving 2 holes where it was previously mounted. I temporarily sealed these off but its not a great fix so a new tub/shower is really needed to keep the water wear it belongs long term. Finally, its ugly and outdated and a new bath will make the place a lot easier to rent when I finally move out.

The picture above shows the messy process of tearing out the drywall. I tore out 3 of the walls first and then was able to stand on the pile of drywall to work on the ceiling.



A big part of the reason these projects take so long is that I only have a few hours a night to work on this stuff and then I have to clean it up so I can use the shower the next day. This picture shows the result after the first day.

Wednesday I removed the vanity and toilet and pulled down all the drywall and insulation board from the shared wall. I then sweat some shutoff valves on the sink supply lines so I could turn the water back on and put the light fixture back up temporarily.

This weekend I'm hoping to swap in the new tub and also put the vent in the roof for the exhaust fan.

Random Projects

I haven't posted in awhile so I thought I'd put together and update of what I've been doing lately. As I mentioned in my last post the 1808 half of the duplex went up for rent Labor day weekend. After showing the place to quite a few interesting people I finally found a great tenant and signed a lease on October 17th and the new tenant moved in the following week. With that chapter finally closed I've had some time to work on a few smaller projects.

I spent a weekend pretending to be an electrician...the majority of the fixtures in the duplex are controlled by at least two switches and somewhere along the line someone decided that dimmer switches were really cool and replaced all a bunch of the 3-ways and 4-ways with standard dimmers. After digging into it and realizing how messed up it was I was absolutely amazed that it worked at all and hadn't electrocuted anyone. I put in a few new 3-ways and a new 4-way and can now actually control the lights from every switch...amazing concept :) While I was screwing around with that I figured I might as well add a few outlets in the garage since there was only the one.

I also spent a few days working on my beauty of a snowblower...

Its a 1971 or 1972 Gilson (Montgomery Ward Branded) 26" two stage that I picked up for free last winter. The lady was trying to sell it for $100 but after looking at it I told her I'd pass...so she just told me to take it. It ran great but the drive mechanism failed the 3rd time I used it so I tore it apart with some help from this website http://home.gwi.net/~spectrum/snowblower.html and found that the friction wheel was toast.

I replaced the friction wheel and cleaned all the crud off the platter and that did the trick, it cruises in all 3 speeds now. Since it actually worked again I figured I'd better give it some TLC, I changed the oil, put a few shots of grease in all the fittings, Lubed up the chute, topped off the auger gearbox with oil, and lubed and adjusted all the control linkages. Its still rusty and pretty beat up but hopefully I can limp this beast along for a few years until I can find a good deal on solid older John Deere.

I took a whack at broom balancing after being inspired by an email from Cory.

My broom was pretty beat up so it took me awhile to get it to stand, but It was pretty darn cool when it worked.

Laura's laptop stopped charging so I ended up completely disassembling it and replacing the DC power jack...only to find out that it wasn't just the bad connector.





It took me about an hour and a half to get it taken apart the first time and I was amazed at flimsy all the individual pieces were. After replacing the connector it worked a bit better but still wouldn't charge reliably so she ended up buying a new laptop the next day. Ah well at least it was fun to take apart :)

I finally ordered parts to build a new computer to use as a storage server and to also run MythTV so that when I do actually watch TV I can watch something I actually want to see instead of suffering through whatever happens to be on the limited channels I get with the antenna. Here is what I built:

Motherboard: ECS GF8200A - Not the latest motherboard but it has an HDMI Output and integrated graphics that will support 1080P video playback even in linux.

Processor: AMD Athlon II 2.6GHz Quad Core - Best bang for the buck right now, tons of power and only $99.

RAM: 4 Gigs of DDR2 1066 - Probably more than I need for a server but there is no reason to go with less.

Hard Drive: Samsung EcoGreen 1.5TB - Tons of space and lower power, perfect for a server.

TV Tuner Card: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 - Dual ATSC tuners so I can record/watch two shows at once. It is theoretically supported in linux...

The system is setup and working, storing files on my network and recording shows off the antenna and playing them back over the HDMI cable to my TV upstairs. The only issue I have to figure out yet is that the driver for the TV tuner flakes out once in awhile and writes error messages to my system logfile...so many errors that the log file fills up the entire 30gig OS partition and grinds the system to a halt which is somewhat inconvenient. This is apparently not a common problem so I'm sure I just messed up the driver isntall somehow...I'll have to figure that out at some point.

Now that I've finished up most of these little random projects I'm getting ready to start ripping out and rebuilding the full bath in 1810. Stay tuned for pictures and updates on that as things progress.

1808 remodel is done and it's up for rent

Last weekend Lon stopped over to help me swap the kitchen doors so that the door handle doesn't prevent the new cabinet drawer from opening all the way. All in all it went pretty well, the doors came out and went back in fairly easily and probably swing and latch better now than they did before.

Here is the door in 1810 after swapping and sealing with Great Stuff Foam.

Here you can see the drawer open all the way with the door closed, finally.

With the doors swapped I was finally able to reinstall all the trim, hang the new blinds, and tie up all the other odds and ends that were still left. Laura was a huge help cleaning up the place, inside and out. It's now basically spotless and the yard is weed free and flower beds have a fresh layer of mulch.

It was basically ready to show Friday so I stuck the for rent sign out on the lawn. I also took a ton of pictures and put together a website to help advertise it. Check out the website at http://ck-rental.blogspot.com/ I then posted an ad on craigslist.com with a few small pictures and then linked to the webpage above so people can go look at all the bigger pictures and details.

Since Friday I've had about a half dozen calls, mostly from the sign on the lawn, and have showed it to two possible tenants and have another showing lined up for tonight or tomorrow. I could probably start a whole blog just discussing the crazy experiences with potential tenants but here are a few of my favorites so far (these are from just the last 5 days)

Potential Tenant 1 - Walk Through
Me: "I'll be checking your credit and criminal background and will check your references"
Her: "Don't bother checking...my credit is terrible and I'm declaring bankruptcy. I had a ""seizure"" blacked out and crashed my brand new SUV into a brand new Toyota Tundra...pushed it into a house and garage...and totaled the huge boat that was in the garage...I'm $125k in debt...I'm not gonna pay that."

It was hard to give her an application with a straight face, based on other indications I'm 100% certain that her ""seizure"" was drug related.

Potential Tenant 2 - Phone Call
Me: "...rent amount may be negotiable with a clean credit history, no criminal record, and great references."
Her: "I can tell by talking to you on the phone that you won't trust me...I have issues."

She then hung up.

Potential Tenant 3 - Phone Call
Him: "...that sounds like a sweet, ugh, sweet place man...do you ugh, ugh, do you check on my...ugh, you know, ugh, bills, errr, do you gotta check my financial, ugh, do you gotta..."
Me: "Yes I will check your credit and criminal history."
Him: "Oh man, we gots terrible credit but we gots jobs now...good ones...and we even payin our bills now...but ugh, ah, well you aint gonna rent to us though, not wit our credit...."

He then hung up.

Its really amazing how just mentioning credit and criminal checks makes people spill their guts like that, I'm truly impressed with their honesty. I have had a few normal people show interest but no takers yet. Hopefully this next showing goes well.