Of Glory Holes, Honey Traps and Orifice Beautification

I should really back up a bit and lay some ground work for the above title.

Our house was built in 1967, there are two things relevant about the vintage of my house for the purposes of this particular allegory. 1) In 1967 there were INCREDIBLY different standards pertaining to size, shape and function of certain basic home amenities.  Take for instance a tub drain.  Today there are two sizes of tub drains available, if for what ever reason your tub drain were to fail (however unlikely that may seem, in the history of suburban man a tub drain aka "a HOLE" there have been no recorded instances of said HOLE's complete cessation of function.  Don't worry though well get there)  you could go to "Big Box Store"  and readily purchase any of a wide variety of tub drains. Some are chrome, some are brass finish, some have fancy spring activated built in plugs, some don't.  Rest assured however, they are available.  In abundance.

The second salient point that relates to my houses age is that the people who built it were craftsman.  Real callused hand, camel smoking, hand saw using, freaking craftsman. Due to the high degree of skill used in the initial construction of my house there are many sub systems that have functioned quietly and perfectly for quite a number of years.  Take for example the tubs plumbing.

My beloved spouse, and adorable baby boy were able help me understand both of the above points in detail.


My wife is in the process of remodeling our main bathroom.  Shes been doing it in small chunks here and there.  One of the recent efforts was trying to "dress up" the tub, drain and water mixing valve.  The valve we had, broke, and my wife seized on the opportunity to "improve" the bathroom by purchasing a dress up kit from a Big Box Store, that included a new spigot, mixing valve, plug plate cover, and a new tub drain!

Non of it Fit! Not a single freaking piece!  It WAS ALL WRONG@!

The first of my two points came into very sharp focus at this point.  Its not that it almost fit, it was just a fraction of a size too big or too small.  It was beyond hope outta wack.  Up sewage creek sans paddle.

Keep in mind, to find out these things did not fit, we first had to try to install them.  If your first thought was, "you have to remove the old fixtures before you can try new ones"  you were absolutely correct.  In the case of the spigot, mixing valve and cover, No. Big. Deal.  We simply cleaned up the old pieces and put em back on.  Easy.  The tub drain was an entirely different experience.  For those of you uninitiated in how holes (yeah its a freaking hole.  Period.)  are installed let me give you a bit of a primer.  New drains (read holes) are installed using cross members that quarter the inner diameter of the drain.  Its there fore easy to slip a pair of needle nose pliers into the quadrants and simply tighten or loosen the drain to install it or remove it.  Simple.  Easy.  Straight forward.

This method of drain (read hole) construction was not used widely in 1967.  In fact I'm sure when they built my house Billy Bad Ass plumbing god finished plumbing the tub drain, holstered his wrench, sparked up an unfiltered cigarette, wiped his oakum stained hands on his flannel shirt and said "that fuckers perfect, it ain't ever coming out".  I'm sure at NO POINT during the construction of this bathroom did any one ever question the aesthetic characteristics of the hole that lets the water leave the bath tub.  Ever, not even once, id bet a kidney on it.
Then my wife showed up.
Billy bad ass and his crew of plumbers used chrome plated brass fittings that were intended to be installed, and removed only if the commies were coming and these items could be used as weapons.  As such removing the old drain plug (read Glory Hole)  required a hammer, a large flat head screwdriver, and two cut digits.  Once removed, and the new improved drain (read hole) proved to be one of the new standard sizes and as such no where near the size used in 1967.  I had to reinstall the old tub drain.

Reinstalling the tub drain, was not fun, easy, straight forward, or something that was completed in what even Job would have considered a reasonable amount of time.  I got it tough, I got it reinstalled.  It was NEVER COMING OUT AGAIN! I had a leak free tub drain (read hole).  I was in the clear.

My son disagreed.

The previously installed plug did not make it through the reinstall.  No biggie though, one of my sons squishy bath toy balls fit perfectly into the mouth of the drain (read hole).  I simply installed the ball the duration of bath time and removed it when we were done.  Simple. Easy. Straight Forward. I would even say it was fail proof.  It was in fact fail less until last night.  When my son shoved the ball down the drain well past the point of no return.  All the way down, no coat hanger drain snake was going to fish this bad boy out.  We were balled er....ah... hosed.  The squishy ball had made it to the honey trap.


sawzall, wedged in between floor joists with out slipping and absolutely FUBARing .5" water supply lines is a nerve wracking experience i need not repeat) .

With the trap replaced, and a good non big box plumbing retailer located it was a simple matter to buy a bushing and install an Orifice beautification kit, with built in drain.  Hot dog.  That and about 9 beers makes the mental rehab possible after a project like this.

I hate plumbing.

Odds and Ends

Aggghhh…. Whatever happened to the month of May? Oh yeah that’s right… I had a HUGE project to do at work with an INSANE deadline so I tried to be productive with my time and unfortunately that meant no blogging. Some recent highlights to what we’ve been up to throughout May are …

• Removing the glass shower door on our bathtub and installing a new shower curtain rod. The removal part was pretty satisfying for me – I HATED cleaning the glass doors and it seemed no matter how often I cleaned they perpetually had hard water spots on them making them look pretty hazy and gross up close. After scraping all the adhesive and caulk grossness off of the tub and tile I installed a new “hotel style” shower curtain rod and it’s such a drastic improvement in my eyes.

Unfortunately the first time we installed the new rod the location didn’t seem right and it just jutted out too far into the bathroom, but the second time around we nailed the position. A lil’ patching to cover the screw holes and touch up paint and you’d never know we had to do it twice (except that I’m telling you). Now I just need to find/DIY a shower curtain to replace the clear PVC one we have up temporarily.

• Replacing shower fixtures. This began because our five decade old shower handle finally decided to bite the dust one evening during Ivan’s bath time. It was well on it’s way out for awhile so I was glad to finally replace it. While replacing the broken plastic handle with a shiny new metal lever I figured I’d update the drain, spout, and tub overflow plate so it would all be shiny and pretty. However, when it comes to plumbing or electrical in our home nothing seems to go as planned.
  
  The overflow plate was a pretty basic replacement but we ended up returning two spouts that didn’t work before giving up and sticking with the original as well as two different drains. During one such attempt at a drain switch that didn’t work, we ended up with what Jens likes to refer to as “mini-Katrina” in our basement due to inadequate amounts of plumbers putty when putting back in to original drain (I’ll take the blame even though Jens told me to use a nickel size amount).
  
  Luckily, Jens was in the basement while I was giving Ivan a bath and could hear the water leak so we discovered it right away or it could have been much worse. We ended up with a few acoustic ceiling tiles that need to be replaced and lots of vacuuming up wet carpet (again…that seems to be a theme with us this spring).  Needless to say we couldn’t get the standard size drains to fit and after some googling we discovered that there is a rare third size that was used commonly in the late sixty’s – go figure! So that’s going to require a trip to a specialty plumbing wholesale store to replace … someday we might get around to it but for now we are living with a old, yet functioning tub drain.
• Patching the hole in our basement drywall from our little foundation repair job. Still needs to be primed and then eventually I’ll get around to painting the whole room since we picked out a paint color. That by the way was a very scientific process which involved slapping a bunch of sample swatches up, deciding that none of them were quite right, and adjusting the one that we liked the best with some white primer to lighten it up a little bit. Once we got the custom tint that we liked I put a swatch on a paint stick that I can take into the paint store and get a color match to. For right now though … that project is pretty low on my priority list.
• Making cabinet doors for the built-ins! Jens finished our first maple cabinet door for the built-ins early this week. It looks awesome!
  
  
  
  
  I can’t wait to get all the doors completed and hung bring us one step closer to finishing the project that never ends. We plan on using BLUM concealed hinges which are pretty reputable for their high quality – I plan on ordering them from amazon very soon since that’s the cheapest place I can find them. I like that they are self-closing and offer three-way door adjustment so we can fine tune the reveal all the way around our inset doors as well as make sure they are flush with the face frames. Once we Jens is done with all the construction, I get to start on the tedious job of sanding, staining, and finishing the whole shebang. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m honestly always a little bit nervous about staining wood although I shouldn’t be because I did about a dozen sample pieces to decide which stain/toner/finish combo to use.
• Restoring our original wood windows. Our exterior trim work needs repainting badly, especially on the southern exposure of the house. The paint is really starting to chip and flake off in some areas. While scraping off some of the flaking paint I also came across some areas in the exterior sill and frame where the wood felt soft and was starting to rot. So I went a little crazy and started chunking out all of the areas of rot to get down to solid wood until my windows look like this.
  
  
  
  
  Yikes, huh!? I’m glad Jens didn’t freak out when he got home and saw what I had done. Well thankfully there’s a product in existence know as wood epoxy for exactly this type of a situation. The epoxy is now cured and next on my priority list is getting around to sanding and painting it. I’ll be back with some before and after pics as well as more detail on the process.

Stool Sample

Yeah yeah yeah, I know, a title like stool sample is well, gross, and I apologize for what ever images that may be conjured up when you read those two words. However, as the picture below details, its appropriate.

We picked up these four bar stools at an Estate sale for 16 dollars, (this was our first Estate Sale experience, and frankly the deals were really good, the thrifty part of these really out weighs the fact that you're more than likely rifling through a dead persons stuff. Lets not dwell on that. Ok? Great.) I've been looking for some unique bar stools for a while, two years in fact. I've found that A) there are not that many "unique" bar stools out there and B) Unique or not finding four decent ones is never even a little cheap. We settled on these due to the price and with a little luck, and a little paint, they could turn out to be decent clean looking simple bar stools. I try to be a big supporter of local items the local beer in Minnesota is really good it has a lot of historical significance for the area, and some neat logos. I would like to do a leather upholstery on the top of the stools, with either an embossed or branded local beer logo. I will keep you updated and lets face it, there is no possible way these could get worse looking.

 

Now a good looking dog, to offset the terrible stools.

A Little Wetness Problem Solved

No, I’m not talking about incontinence or my underarms (thank goodness!) but rather an area in our finished basement which has been a reoccurring problem after heavy rainfalls last fall and this spring as I described in this post. I had finally had enough of the wet weather giving me this headache to deal with in our basement so we decided to bite the bullet and try to resolve the issue. Our first step was to pick up some hydraulic cement from the big box store. This stuff is used to patch foundation cracks which is what we anticipated we were dealing with given that the wetness kept occurring in the same localized spot.

Once home and the kiddo went down for a nap Jens and I got to work ripping out a section of drywall. I let Jens have his fun doing the demo part since I was a bit nervous about what we’d find behind it the drywall. However, to our amazement, things weren't nearly as horrid as we were both imagining. First off the basement appeared to be finished correctly meaning there was actually wood furring strips, styrofoam insulation, and a plastic vapor barrier behind the drywall. Score! Secondly, our ‘foundation crack’ where we were expecting a large gapping expanse the size of the Grand Canyon going all the way up the foundation wall happened to be a small crack the size of a pen tip about 6 inches from the floor.

Although the crack wasn’t much it was weeping water at a steady rate, thus the huge wet area in our basement carpet cap which was acting like a sponge. The carpet tack strips were also rotted from the wetness where it appeared that the strips were acting like a water dam until they pretty much rotten through so a few carpet tack strips will need replacement. But now for the magic …. how we patched our crack.

The process was pretty simple: mix cement cover crack and hold there with a trowel for 3-5 minutes until it firmed up enough, and smooth out the patch with the trowel. Yep, like I said it was like magic.

It still doesn’t look very pretty in our basement but things seem to be drying out and our patch appears to be doing its job. Wohooo!

Once the patch is fully cured we’ll start patching the wall back up and putting the carpet and trim back down to return it all back to normal. But for now I’m just relieved that our wetness problem seems to be taken care of and Jens and I are both kicking ourselves for taking so long to get this done since it was so simple. It seriously took us less than 40 minutes. Now we know, but hopefully there won’t be a next time since we plan on putting gutters on the house to make sure we don’t have water running down along our foundation walls. I guess we live and learn, right?

April Showers….

…bring wet basements. Yes, I know they are supposed to bring May flowers, but this spring the frequent rainy weather we’ve been experiencing and the prior melting of a record amount of snow has lead to a reoccurring wet spot in our basement whenever we get heavy rains. And guess what … so far it has rained about everyday this week, and Jens is gone so that leaves me here to try to deal with it by my lonesome.

Nobody likes a wet basement, but it’s even worse when it occurs in a finished part of the basement which is carpeted and dry-walled. The first it occurred we thought it was due to our sump pump not operating correctly, but we’ve now replaced it and it’s operating just fine and water is freely flowing into the sump from our drain tile.

It appears to be a localized issue as only one spot continues to get wet when it rains and it appears wettest next to the exterior wall. So now we are back to diagnosing the issue which unfortunately will likely mean tearing out some drywall to investigate our block foundation for a crack. Honey if you’re reading this, now might be a good time to buy me a dremel multitool for Mother’s Day (hint, hint). Hopefully what we uncover is not too ugly!

Oh and as for the May flowers, the daffodil bulbs I planted last fall have finally started blooming this week so although it’s not technically May I’ll take them over the April showers anytime.

The Magical Mythical Spinny Thing

To start I got a new tool.  Specifically a very complicated tool holding device.  This specific tool holder will allow us to do a wide variety of here to for unaccomplishable projects with a modicum of success rivaling people who do this for a living! (applause breaks out, angels sing, light shines from the heavens).  Lay-mans terms; We built a router table.


A table, yep, a table.  You have to understand the significance behind what a router table represents.  I can now pass different and various species of wood over, next too, around, near and at specific set distances from 1/2" shank razor sharp shaping bits that spin at 16,000rpms. Excuse me while I breathe lecherously into a paper bag.  Im that excited. 

Router tables, good free standing shop equipment router tables, not  "bench top" models (typically suited for doll houses , bird houses, and other such dwellings that people, real people are not ever supposed to inhabit) can easily put you back 500+ dollars, easy.  Well, we needed a router table and at that price point i damn near choked on mouth full of my favorite premium beverage (Premium, really that's what its called, and its well, premium, sorry for the side bar, but its awesome).  Becky and I began scouring Craigslist in an effort to upgrade my previously purchased bench top router table (craigslist).  What we found was not encouraging everything was either hyper expensive or simply under-suited to what we needed.  We did eventually find a brand new BenchDog router table top for 100 bucks, GREAT DEAL, had the insert every thing we needed, except for the table, the dust collection, the fence etc. etc.  We had work to do.


It started with the concept.  I took my design cues for the table from things id seen on the internet and quite frankly pics of ocean going oil drilling platforms.

Once we had the 4x4's in place and secured by the 2x4 frame, we could put the skirt/actual table support on.  Now building the router table from scratch was no easy feat, we had to lay out, mark and precisely drill all of the holes for the T-nuts with a hand held drill and speed square. This was not fun nor was it quick but, we took our time and i was pretty happy with result.

Once the base was built, the skirt and router table were connected It was relatively simple to join the two parts.  WA-LA Router table, and i was freaking pumped (YEAH BABY) .  We weren't done yet, there was still the issue of the fence and the dust collection system. 

The fence was, well, I'm a bit ashamed to admit this, the fence is from IKEA.  Thats right, on my wife's birthday after a 4 dollar meal of Swedish meatballs we hit up the reject station at IKEA and found what would eventually turn into a bad ass router table fence. 

There it is in all its $8.00 baby blue glory.  It was a pretty simple matter to cut the parallel tracks for the

Router table tracks and insert some pre-made extruded aluminum tracking and screw downs after i made the fence and sled.  I included a port on the back that works really really well to attach my shop vac and, i had it.  The table we built has the features of an 800.00 table at any store that would sell them, were into this table maybe 150.00 total. Its great it really is. 

Next ill show you what we did with it once we built it. 

And now a picture of my Dog.  For No Reason At All. 

Our Revamped Bathroom Vanity

March definitely hasn’t been a good month for blogging but it’s been productive. I finally finished revamping our bathroom vanity which I began writing about in this post back in January. And without further ado, here are the before and after shots.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a drastic improvement from the dated ugly box we started with. And believe it or not it’s still the same vanity that’s been upgraded with some base board , bead molding, paint, new hardware, and new doors constructed by my handy hubby.

Here are the steps we took to get from point A to B:

Step One is obvious - Remove the old doors and hardware. I also removed some 40 year old (probably original) contact paper from the inside and primed the whole inside of the cabinet.

Ste Two - Cut and install base board around the bottom of the cabinet. I used some big box store pre-primed base board. I cut miters for the corners with our compound miter saw, cut the other edges and curved radiuses with a coping saw, and then Jens saved me some time and cut the straight portion between the two “feet” with a straight cut bit in his router. I installed it with finish nails using a pneumatic nailer/stapler (aka nail gun).

Step Three - Become impatient with lack of progress on bead molding (see step 4), and decide to prime/paint the outside of the cabinet. I used gray latex primer and Gildden’s Onyx Black latex paint in a High Gloss. In an attempt to achieve less visible brush marks I also mixed in some Floetrol latex paint additive. It may have helped a little but there are still more brush marks than I’d like. If I had a do-over, I’d probably use an oil-based paint and go for an eggshell or semi-gloss finish - it flows a little better and shows fewer brush strokes . The high gloss finish tends to show every single brush stroke. To get the luxe glossy look I’d then use a clear vanish over the oil-based paint to protect it and give it some more shine.

Step Four – Cut and install bead molding. Using 3” width poplar from the big box store Jens used his router to put a bead profile on each edge of the poplar. He then cut the bead off (leaving a shoulder on the bead) by running the beaded boards through his table saw. This was good practice for our built-in cabinets we’re constructing around our fireplace which will be done in hard maple. Our take away lesson here is to make sure we are using wood stock that is the same thickness as the cabinet face frame to cut the bead molding from.  If you use different thickness’ the back edges don’t sit flush which can lead to hardware installation issues later. The other thing we’ll do different with our other cabinets is leave a smaller shoulder on the bead molding, just an aesthetic preference.

After Jens cut the bead molding on his table saw, I cut it to down to the correct length using the compound miter saw for a mitered joint in the corners. Admittedly, I wasn’t as precise here as I should have been since I knew I could caulk the gaps in the miters and the paint would hide any sloppy miter joints. It’s a good thing I now have some practice because this’ll have to be perfect on our stain grade maple cabinets. The bead was installed with some finish nails using the air gun. I LOVE the air gun! I get giddy when I get to use it so I forgot to sand the bead molding before installing so the wood was a little fuzzy but the two coats of paint I put over it helped hide it a bit.  

Step Five – Build the new doors. Using the leftover from the 3” poplar board that we cut the bead profile away from, Jens made cabinet door rails and stiles using his brand spanking new router table and a rail and stile router bit set. I’m not going to go into all the details, I’ll let Jens explain that complicated part in his own post some day for those of you who are into the hard-core woodworking stuff. For the panels of the door we used ¼” thick MDF. I then got the fun job of sanding the assembled doors and priming/painting them (See step 3).

Step Six  – Install doors and hardware. Besides picking out the correct hinges for an inset door, there’s not much to explain here. We used a more traditional looking hinge and pull in a modern brushed nickel finish to echo the new traditional form and modern finish of the cabinet. We also used some magnetic door catches for inset doors to help the doors stay closed. I installed the hinges on the cabinet first and then attached them to the doors, no mortising or trickery required just pre-drilling pilot holes once I got the positioning correct and securing everything with the provided screws. It was more art than science  attempting to even out the reveal around the doors and make sure everything was hanging approximately even. (I used playing cards as shims to help get the right spacing around the perimeter)

It’s far from perfect but I’m happy with it and since I’m happy with it Jens is happy with it. The wood, paint and hardware were relatively cheap in comparison to a new vanity and we got a lot of practice in cutting beading and making cabinet doors for the built-in cabinet project. Now we just need to wait for some warmer weather to tackle cutting and polishing the carrera marble for the top that I scored for $50 off of craigslist well over a year ago.