Cold Spaghetti

Plumbing for master bath sink (wall mount). The black pipe to the left is the vent for the sink, tub, and shower. The shower plumbing will be in the same wall.
Looking up over the tub. Paul framed this out so that there would be room for the venting for the A/C and heater.

We added storage above the washer and dryer and over the doorway into the bathroom from the laundry room.
Some detail on Paul’s roofing/framing in the new section.
More detail in roofing/framing. AND, the mechanisms to hang the panel door going into the study from the porch/family room. We’re going to hang the door that currently separates our bedroom and bathroom here as a panel door … and are on the hunt for old french doors. Saw one that we loved at The Bank… but it’s match was gone.
We have Air Conditioning!!! The new A/C is to the left (duh) and is for the back of the house. Paul did a great job building the platform. The crew that installed the compressor said that it was, bare none, the absolute best hook-up they had ever seen. This is the trend now that we are subbing out projects… everyone who comes to give an estimate about falls over at the quality of the work, are dumbfounded when Paul explains it was all him, and then offer him a job.
More details of the platform and hook-ups.
Finishing framing above the storage area in the laundry room.
Paul was really proud of this job — it just came together perfectly.
See the air vents? Paul is embarrassed that all the studs don’t line up and would want me to say that.

Some insulation protecting the gas line. See the box to the bottom left? That is where the swinging door will go — leading from our bathroom to under the washer/dryer. This is where Scout will have his own private litter box “room” (accessible from laundry room). Complete with an outlet for a nightlight. We’re not kidding.
Detail of drop ceiling above master bath.
Porch/study venting.
Blocking edges to prep for drywall hang.

Bathroom vanity cabinets ordered 2 1/2 weeks ago (3 week lead time).
Laundry cabinets ordered 1 1/2 weeks ago (2 week lead time).
Porcelain floor tiles ordered for bathroom and laundry (~7 day lead time).
Plumbing fixtures ordered 1 week ago (3-4 week lead time).
Insulation for extra walls (in renovation/new spaces only) blown in on Tuesday. This was pushed back from last Thursday since we weren’t ready.
Paul is working on pulling electric and Cat-5 wires and installing recessed light boxes and switches. Lots of walking around trying to figure out where we want switches and plugs.
Paul sawed out the back wall so that our closet opens within the bathroom. We’re drywalling over the existing closet opening. Big mess… our clothes hang on a makeshift rack in the front room area and the house has lathe dust from the work.
Hopefully, drywall at the end of the week?

Some bathroom inspiration. The bottom tile is our floor tile for the bathroom and laundry. We’re using the tortoise clear glass as accent. It just may be all coming together… eventually.

This is Yarmouth Blue, on our “test strip” of Hardie.
This is the color on the peak. Or, this is the color in this particular light from the vantage of the roof (you really can’t see it from the backyard unless you’re really straining to see it).
We like it — it actually dries with more gray and the photographs seem more minty than it looks in true light. If we go this way (and it looks like we are) when we get around to re-siding the house and painting the new siding, the siding will be this color and the shutters will be dark dark blue (we’re thinking McHale Navy… or something that sounds like that). Or, if we get that discount from a contractor we know, we may be matching it to a Sherman Williams paint. Here’s for hoping that the whole house is one color within a year from this post…

Every Monday, Paul tells me he is besieged by friends who have desperately been searching the blog all weekend for updates on the addition. Where are the pictures? The news? THE ACTION? Either Paul has become the temple to Do-It-Yourself-ers, eager to believe that they, too, can build a house, OR these are people who know us really well and understand that with us, “home renovation” and “comedy” are synonymous.

My guess is that the last category is correct. Which is why no one reading this will be surprised when I say we’re having trouble with plumbing.

No, it’s not as bad as the time we left town for a few days and a valve burst and ran water so hard and so long that it soaked through the brick, making a dripping 8-by-10 foot wet shape on the side of the house (it was totally the image of the Virgin Mary, but we didn’t get the right press involved… damn). And it’s not as bad as the time we left town, again, and another valve burst and the water ran and ran so hard that it… (yes, that’s right, it happened to us TWICE). It was a bit touching though, watching the water-disaster clean up crew help empty out the basement. Two feet of water had filled, floated, and bloated the wood on dozens of pinball machines and video games. So grown men were literally choking back tears over concern that Q*bert or Funhouse wasn’t ever going to be playable again. (The electronics were fine, the wood was ruined.)

Then there was that time in Michigan when Paul was installing the washer and we heard a pipe clank and the sound of water pouring in the basement all over the pinball machines. (Those games have been through a lot.)

Then here in New Orleans, we burst the water supply pipe while installing the hallway bathroom sink at around 12:03am, the night before Paul was about to leave on a big business trip. Best part: all of our towels were wet in the washing machine. I ended up running for sheets and t-shirts to sop up the 2-inches of water off the floor. Good times.

So, why would we even think of doing plumbing ourselves? I have no idea. Granted, we DID build a damn fine bathroom in Michigan and Paul did all that plumbing. But apparently, his talents end with 1/2″ pipes. The 3/4″ pipes on old homes (like ours) do not apply. He’s had a rough week. Still, we can claim a victory:

We DO have laundry! Paul managed to get the water working and functional… and then we heard an explosive sound from under the house. Uh-ho. So the update: we have COLD water laundry working. Hot water will come later. But a plus: Paul’s beautifully organized and thoughtful design has made it so that we can turn off sections of the house’s water — so he can work on the plumbing in the back without impacting the front. Hooray for no longer having to shut down the whole house for hours and hours!

After conversing with a couple of plumbers, Paul actually thinks he can fix the current problems. Of course I believe him. Really, I do. How can you not believe in a guy whose butt is that cute? Still, with so much left to do and time running out, we may hire a plumber friend to finish the hot water and finish the final hook-ups for the tub. I think Paul is still vested in doing the shower plumbing installation himself… stay tuned.

In the mean time… Paul built the deck for the tub (below). That’s the tub in the background.

Here’s the tub story… we went to a local plumbing supplier a few weeks ago to check out the showroom and get a few manufacturer catalogs. Loads of online research of installation guides and rough-ins follows. We made some basic choices, compiled questions, and made an appointment with the guy identified as ‘the one who knows showers the best’ since we needed to order the shower valves and trim right away. Hal was great; we hit it off with him right away, he instantly understood our level of understanding of the products and was able to help us without a blink. We got to talking in between our walking around and questions and ended up telling him our story of how we decided to stay in New Orleans and the things that we have done since committing to be a part of the city’s rebirth. At one point, I got a little choked up talking about when we realized how we couldn’t leave this place, and apologized — only to look up and see that he was reacting the same way. It was a little New Orleans’ moment… followed by another. He himself was a born-and-raised New Orleanian and was so thrilled by our enthusiasm for the city that he went into action wanting to help us. He worked out a great discount for all our products (cheaper than Lowe’s). Then, as we were showing him the tub we were thinking of getting, recalled that the warehouse across the street may have had one outside, a return, and maybe we could get it as much as half off? He called his boss. 10 minutes later, we’re in the back of the outdoor warehouse storage area looking at tubs. The initial bare-bones air tub (still a $1700 tub) was too beat up for us to really want to spring for… but right around the corner? A brand-new tub by the same manufacturer. Back to the showroom to check out the details… it’s an Amma model, a very, very, very nice tub. It was BRAND NEW… it was returned to the warehouse the morning before (contractor mis-measured). We bought it on the spot, delivered to or front room the next day for a quarter of the discounted sale price. The icing on the cake was that Hal kept saying that he wished he could do MORE, which was amazing since he had done so much for us already just by being so helpful and friendly. We feel certain that our Karma was all used up that day, explaining why the plumbing went so wrong the following weekend.
Another view of the tub deck. That knee-wall separates the tub deck from the toilet area. The shower is in the far upper area of the picture. The tub faucet will mount in the front.
Another view of the tub deck.
Here is the back of the washer/dryer. Paul built a platform for them to sit on so that there is no bending when we do laundry (exciting!) Also, Scout’s liter box will go underneath… we’ll put a little swinging access door between the two studs furthest to the left.
On Tuesday, we ordered a vanity for the bathroom… it will arrive in about 2 1/2 weeks. The question is whether we can get insulation and drywall in before it arrives… We hope to order tile next week.

—
*Never buy a house with polybutylene piping (no, we didn’t qualify for the lawsuit because the valves burst, not the pipe).

We met my Mom in Gulfport this morning and were back before noon. Paul instantly got to work on the house. (I worked on healing.)

Paul got the electrical lines ready for the A/Cs. Part of the renovation includes putting the units on the roof, on a platform Paul will build. You can see the wires he ran below. It was difficult to determine exactly what to run, as A/C installation information is difficult to find — the pros want you to hire them to do everything. Paul settled on 2-circuits with each one handling 40 amps, bumping it up from 30 amps in case we get a bigger unit. The big wire on the left is going up to the roof for the A/Cs… the wire on the right is for a smoke detector.

This is our future shower! It will be huge — 4×4. We’re going to do thermostatic valves and overhead European shower head (we’ve done this before and consider both a must). We are thinking of putting in some jets (we have incredible water capacity because each side of the double had their own 80-gallon tanks which were kept when the home was combined) — we’re not particularly interested in using jets often (think of the water waste — ugh!) but are thinking that it may be an extra touch to pay off later. I admit: it would certainly feel good on my back about now.
This is the shower bed. Rather than making a mud bed, Paul found this model online. It’s made to be solid and not have the leak problems of the mud bed… it’s ready to be laid and tiled over. It’s huge — 4×4.
The roof. Hopefully, he’ll get to do the second coat in the next week or so. You can see the work he did today here… trimmed out roof, vents, and A/C electrical boxes and supports with the hardie trim pieces. The electrical lines are done and ready!
More trim. The Hardieplank boards will be delivered tomorrow. Maybe he’ll start hanging this week? We have to decide on a paint color for the house, too. We are thinking of going ahead and painting the hardie and then re-doing the rest of the house piece by piece as we re-do the walls. So we may have a backwards New Orleans’ paint job… the BACK of the house will be redone instead of the front! We are thinking of a very very pale grey blue with white trim and dark dark dark blue black shutters. We’re between two white houses so we like the idea of a little color.

The old laundry area, as seen from the kids’ bedroom (that’s the door in their room on the left) — as it was last weekend. The window is the current “Beetlejuice” window now hanging without a wall around it.
No floor left… just the old 25-foot cypress floor joists. Paul cut them out and is saving them. We’re hoping to expose part of our outbuilding and use these in an exposed ceiling. They are really phenomenal.
The corner of the house before renovations started. Remember when Paul had to jack up the corner of the house? You can see the sill he put in and the block on the left where he raised the house. This also shows how the walls are not sitting on anything. At this point, you could shake them and get significant horizontal movement… sort of alarming.
Floors and walls are gone. This is where we were as of the end of last weekend.

Paul starts to put in the new floor joists.




He’s got all the floor joists done now and several of the floor boards in. With everything going on, we haven’t taken pictures of it yet.

The right is the back wall of our bedrooms. The left wall is the new room Paul recently built on the back of the house. The middle…? Once upon a time it was kitchens, then bathrooms, then laundry rooms and bathrooms. In the future, we hope it is one nice bathroom and one nice laundry room. Although Paul is suggesting we just put up walls and make an indoor racquetball court.

The Beetlejuice Window. (It’s an original window, we think it used to be in our Master bedroom. It’s safe in it’s current hanging spot as we decide what to do with it.)Exterior view.

More details on the step-by-step flooring removal and new floor joists. Too tired and overwhelmed at the moment to contemplate it.

The back, current state.
See the dark green and white tiles? One of the many levels of flooring. Everything has to come out. Even those big huge floor joists. Everything. It all has to be gutted — soon this will be just earth and roof, with the main house and the new room on either side holding the sides of the roof up. Since this room is off the kids’ room and our room, the bedrooms are really, really cold.

Click on the picture for a better view. Paul removed all electrics… finding two live wires in the wall. He capped off the gas line (number 4 — little black tube.) He cut the sewer line (number 7). And is getting ready to remove the floor on the other side of the house and do much of this all over again.

The pulled wire.
Debris — just from one side of the floor. It’s amazing how much debris comes out of a house!

Now that we have doors and windows, we were able to move stuff into the space without concern of severe damage from the elements. This meant that it was time to move to the next step… gutting the existing bathroom and laundry area.

First, to explain: our original house ends with two bedrooms in the back of the house, currently one is our “master” bedroom (which means it’s a little bigger than the others) and the other bedroom is the one Will and Kate share. (The “third” bedroom is a small 8×12 or so sized room that was Will’s bedroom at one time and is now the home office — an important thing for us since Paul works full-time from home.)

At some point in the home’s history, a lean-to type addition was created that made bathrooms and laundry outlets for each side. This happened when the home was still two homes (we live in a shotgun double, which is two shotguns that share a common wall in the interior — it was combined into one home in the 1980s). So, when we bought the house there were technically three bathrooms… although the tubs in the back bathrooms were not hooked to water and could not hold water and the front bathroom was hardly functioning. In reality, the house had no kitchen or bathrooms when we bought it — the first thing we did was the front bathroom. The shower was okay and the only usable thing in the front bathroom (and has served as our only place to wash since we moved in — it was also where we washed dishes for our first 4 months in the house) — we used a toilet in the back of the house until we finished the front bathroom. You can see some of the before and after shots here: hall bath before and after — kitchen before and after. (Note that the “kitchen” in the before picture was completely for show — nothing was vented, plumbed, or otherwise functioning… the cabinets weren’t even screwed in.)

From what we had seem in comparable homes, we knew that we were going to have to do the kitchen right (which is the way we do everything, anyway, crazy perfectionists that we are) so we used all our available funds on the kitchen and front bathroom (and re-wiring the Whole. Entire. House. and installing attic stairs, installing recessed lights in Every. Room., installing speakers in the kitchen…. etc., etc.) We did some beautifying before Kate was born, but really, the vast majority of the work on the house has been over protecting ourselves from electrical fire or having a ceiling fall down in the middle of the night. Priorities. So, the unfinished bathrooms sat. We used the bathroom on the kids’ side of the house for the laundry. We took out the unusable tub on this side and gave it to a very friendly organic blueberry farmer in Mississippi. The tub on our side was in better shape; we worked with a local tradesman and refinished it (some of the work was Paul, some was the tradesman… love people who will work this way). But nothing was ever hooked up since we knew we would be doing work to the room. We vacillated for several years about what to do with the back until the plan came together last fall.

In the project right now, the next big thing we need to do is finish the roof. The first layer is temporary for up to 90 days… and we’ve burned through about half (or more) of those. But before we can get the final roof layer up, the vent stacks from the new bathroom have to be installed. That means that the existing bathrooms/laundry has to be gutted completely, framed out and plumbed so that we know where the stacks should go. With the new space sealed to the elements, we were ready to gut. We started moving stuff out into the new section and I took the kids out of town to give Paul the freedom to do mess, dangerous work without the distraction of kids in the house. Here are some of his pictures. Maybe he’ll post some with comments soon… right now, I think he’s completely exhausted since (in addition to the housework during daylight hours) he also did work-work this weekend and is gearing up for a crazy week job-wise. Thank goodness I’m in a holding pattern until IRB meets and responds so I can pick up the slack!

PICTURES of the DEMOLITION…

This is the door leading to the kids’ room to the left and the exterior wall on the right. You can see that this addition (we’re not sure when it was done… the 70s maybe?) the drywall was pounded up RIGHT ON THE EXTERIOR WOOD PANELING of the house. See the drywall, wood panels (that were the original exterior of the house before siding was put up over it), and then the lathe underneath? Wild.
This is looking from the kids’ door up and out to the new addition. Once the drywall on the ceiling was pulled out, the skylight became visible! This is the new skylight Paul installed when he built the roof. One note about the exterior wall to the left in this picture. It did not have any boarding holding it together under the drywall. And it is very very very flimsy. Paul feels certain that a good push would bring it down completely; it’s already bowing quite a bit. He says we need to take out all the framing and siding and completely re-do the whole wall. If we were paying someone else to do this work, this is where the budget would get blown. There was on way to know about the problem until the wall was out; thankfully Paul has the inclination to learn about these things and do quality work himself… otherwise, we’d be way way behind schedule and over budget. This is the same side of the house and wall that he jacked up and reframed the base of when he was starting the new room in the back.
This wall is the interior wall against the kids’ room. Paul has started removing the wood siding (the original exterior walls that the drywall was nailed up against when this room was added.) You get a sense of just how incredibly messy the work is.
Looking into the bathroom area; the wall to the right is the interior wall with the kids’ room behind it. The wall in the center of the picture is the center dividing wall — on the other side is our mirrored bathroom/laundry. Note the center wall — see the floor? The tile floor was laid after the interior wall was built — see how the wall slopes? The floor is leveled out around the wall. Who knows what we are going to find when the floor starts getting ripped out.
This is the window that was in the kids’ side. At some point, a vine grew through the backwall. Workers ripped the plant out and then put up drywall. You can see the tracks of the plant below (no, it’s not termites, although that is what Paul initially thought… no sign of termite debris and no damage… it’s from a plant!) The whole on the floor is where the toilet in the kids’ side used to be.
Wow! This is looking from where our bathroom used to be. You can see where the wall dividing the two sides used to be. The door to the right is the new door leading to the new room in the back. That’s our washer and dryer still in the same place. Paul is going to make a temporary hook-up in the new room so that we have a washer and dryer during this part of the renovation.
Looking from where the washer and dryer are back to the other side, towards where our bathroom used to be. The interior wall in the process of being demolished was the wall that had washer and dryer hook-ups (identical to the other side).
Same view, with the walls gone!! The door to the far right leads to our bedroom. The pumps coming up from the floor were where the two sinks were (one on each side of the dividing wall). Oddly, the sinks drained way way way to the left (if you scroll up, you can see where Paul sawed off the drain — a big black pipe — down from the sink water pipes.) He said it was hard to work around these pipes, since an accidental hit would have resulted in a geyser. Early on, a beam did fall and put a decent dent in the top of the dryer.

Now, he’s starting on taking down the rest of the backwall. The framed windows are what Paul did from the other side when he started the addition in the back.
These are the other two skylights — the ones that will shine over our Master Bathroom one day! See the different paint colors on the boards? We have no idea why. Paul thinks that at one point, the room may have been open to these boards and the color was aesthetic. He also wonders if there may have been a drop ceiling at one point and hence when the white color was done.
Back wall is outta there! Wow. Notice that the bead board up on the far wall (the side exterior wall) is actually different than that found elsewhere. After the board came down, he found that this side is just as flimsy as the other. Both sides will need to be completely re-built if we’re to do it right.
Looking down the backwall to the kids’ bedroom side.
Now he moved to working on the interior wall. Interesting to find that major parts of the lathe had been rough-cut through (see the drywall where lathe should be?) Whether for plumbing or electric or…?… we have no idea.
Paul was impressed by this horizontal beam work. These beams are seriously heavy-duty and the diagonal cuts were all done by hand tools. Impressive carpentry, likely over a 100 years old. These diagonal beams are on each side of the house. We’re not sure what the foundation under them looks like and how they contribute to the load on this load-bearing wall. We would like to cut through this to make our closet open from this side, versus in the room as it does currently. We may possibly have a tough time doing this depending on what we find in the next steps.
The interior wall, siding down. That’s the lathe with drywall on the other side! This is also where Paul got after two long days of hard, dirty work! (Big thanks to hired handy-guy Wesley, a young kid who is in technical school and has helped out with some of the debris hauling and assorted tasks… I’m not sure Paul could’ve done all of this without some extra hands!)
The current plan is for me to bring the kids back early Tuesday (hopefully, we’ll have water and electricity all working by then… although probably no washer and dryer). That will let me drop the kids off in school and then go home to clean thoroughly before the kids get into the house. Paul tells me that the dust is pretty bad (despite all his efforts at clean-up and protecting the rest of the house) and we want to get up all the dust and debris in the air before exposing the kids.

Next steps:
— Tear out the floor
— Rebuild the side walls
— Frame out the interior walls
— Rough plumbing
— Vent stacks
— Roof finished
— Exterior hardiplank hung (at this point, the exterior would be finished and we would really sigh a sigh of relief)
— A/Cs installed on the roof (hopefully before we have too many more 80-degree days)
— Then we can turn to the interior electric, plumbing, shower bed installation, drywall, flooring, tile, fixtures…. etc., etc.

We have windows! These were correct, thank goodness. Work has continued…
While waiting for the corrections in the windows, Paul installed the siding trim.
Wait, what’s that?? WE HAVE WINDOWS AND DOORS!!!
The house is now sealed from the elements. Paul removed the plywood wall providing some tiny protection from the wind and we can walk to the backyard from the inside of the house. It’s a ROOM!