Bathroom progress slowly continues

The tub we put in was what we thought we wanted. Deep, comfortable, cheap. $180 or so at Menards. (Lyons brand.) The first one we picked up was damaged. Exchanged it and installed the second one on a mortar bed. Had a bit of flex still that bothered me. Over the last 6 months or so, that flex has gotten worse already. I started worrying about this tub cracking within a couple years. A search of the internets would show that others have had similar problems w/ this tub. It's made of fiberglass, and if we shine a flashlight through the back, we can see spots where there's no fiberglass at all, but just gelcoat and resin. VERY thin areas. I don't want to waterproof and tile around this tub if I'm not confident in it.

And so we began the search for a different tub. Now we needed a 32X60 tub that was deeper than normal, and not cast iron. (No way I'm hauling 300+lb tub up the creaky stairs, nor does the floor need the extra weight.) Not many choices out there for a deep 32" wide tub. Lots of whirlpool options, and lots of normal height options. We narrowed it down to a Sterling and a Kohler, and picked the Kohler based on looks. The apron design and general lines of the basin should match the style we're going for in the bathroom better than anything else we've seen that would work.



Picked it up this weekend, hoping to put it in next weekend. This thing is a LOT more solid, and I'm definitely a lot more confident in the quality of this tub. (Koher Devonshire Bath ~$500.) Still only 80 lbs, so it will be easy enough to manuever into place. Unfortunately, the drain is 1" farther from the wall, so I will need to redo the drain setup. But I'd rather do that then redo the tile later.

Other than that, electrical work is happening now. I'm hoping the bathroom part of that will be done this week.

So next weekend, get the new tub in. Then insulate around it and put up the cement board walls. Mud and tape the cement board joints and then we'll seal the entire assembly w/ Redgard. Then we can tile the tub area and put vinyl trim up around the window. After that, drywall, primer, paint, flooring, install sink and finish shelving behind the toilet and next to the tub. And I'm hoping to have that done by Halloween. It will definitely be a challenge!

2 Steps forward, one step back

So, we finished the rough framing of the south wall in the bathroom. Extended the height of the wall that we had framed. I will need to go back and shim up a couple things, sand down a couple others so the drywall will lay fairly flat. Flat enough for this house, anyway. Not the prettiest framing, but it will work.



So, Jen and I started talking over more of the framing we need to do, and then started talking about our plans for changing the ceiling in our office (2nd BR). Started talking about one possibility, but my thought was that it would add some load to the center wall of the 2nd floor. So we started looking at how much weight is on the center of the house. I figured we needed to know the size of the beam downstairs to determine what it could handle.
So, I went downstairs and used the dremel to cut a small square in the drywall of the beam.
The "beam-like" chunk of wall is 13" tall. but inside is completely hollow! I started to suspect as much when I measured the height and found it 79", suspiciously close to door opening height. I think this was a 3rd bedroom, or completely separated dining room or something similar at some point.
So, this meant more work. In order for this to be proper, we need to add yet another wood beam. More work. Something that I had assumed all along was OK. But it explains the springiness of of the floor in the office. Ah well.
So, running the numbers, we will be using a 9.5" X 1.75" LVL beam. This will allow us to make this opening 3" taller, which will really make it feel more open, I think. We also will be able to decrease the jut-out in the wall you can see on the left side, to make the opening larger. We have yet to decide how much larger we'll go. It's about 69" opening now. We could go up to 92" or so if we wanted. But I think it may be something like an 80" opening or so. So, after we complete the bathroom, this is next on the list so there's no worries when we change the ceiling in the office. Which right now is a poor excuse for framing. Really just hacked together poorly. Like much of this house was. :-)

Bathroom work

I was reviewing our utility bills the other day and noticed that the end of October is when our gas usage becomes noticeable. Which reminded me we only have 2 months to finish the bathroom and raise the ceiling in the 2nd BR so we can reinsulate the attic. Which means we better get moving, since it's been 21 months since we moved in! (I cringe when I say that. Had WAAY too much going on to get enough done on the house.)

So, I've shifted into hardcore mode and will be working feverishly (FINALLY!) to get the attic reinsulated before Halloween.

Stayed home today while Jen went to watch some motorcycle racing and help out w/ a charity auction afterward.

Days like this are frustrating. Spent hours on the ladder w/ my head in the hottest part of the house, and it doesn't look like I did much. But I created some new supports and reinforcements for the support of a dormer sidewall, and making another former wall shorter. Once I did that I could finally remove the old ceiling "framing" that was thrown together from old scrap wood back in the 50s, I believe. I had to be careful I did everything in the correct order so nothing was without support.
Once every piece was out of the way and cut off from the existing tub alcove wall top, I started adding on to the tub wall to have it reach the new ceiling joists we put in a while ago. Old ceiling height was about 6'11" (About 4 inches below the conduit in the picture.) New ceiling height is about 8'9", so it really makes the room feel a lot more comfortable, I think. Raising a ceiling height that was claustrophobicably low before nearly 2 feet up will do that, though.


Got the extra top plate on the existing wall to tie 2 pieces together, and then put the new top plates in after marking every rafter. Got one mini stud installed.

Should finish the wall extension tomorrow and start working on the wall over the doorway. Hoping to finish the framing during the week. We'll see!

Catching Up!

Wow, time flies when you're either too busy or too lazy.

So, where are we now?

In my last post, (Over 7 MONTHS AGO!) we added a wood beam. Worked out well. Since then, here's what we've done:

* Installed the tub, and temporarily installed fixtures and piping enough to function for now.
* Added another wood beam at the end of the kitchen to open up a doorway from 30" to nearly 5 feet.
*Installed new subflooring in the bathroom
*Replaced the toilet
* Added a window in the stairway so you can see the backyard from inside the house, and to let some light into the cave of a stairway, and light through the enlarged kitchen opening into the kitchen.
* Had all of our attic insulation sucked out so I can evaluate electrical and structural things in the attic. (Found an old revolver from the 30s underneath all the insulation!)
* Removed the 7 foot ceiling in the bathroom, and started reframing for a 9 foot ceiling.
* Removed the other 2 interior walls in the bathroom
* Installed a skylight in the bathroom
*Removed the walls in the stairway, and most of the carpet over the stairs as well as the corner cabinet in the stair landing.

So, that's where we are today.
Next steps:


Finish framing for the 9 foot ceiling, including extending the tub alcove wall to the new ceiling height and properly supporting the dormer sidewall.
Frame the other 2 bathroom walls.
I'll fill in more on each project


New window and skylight.

Adding a wood beam

After jacking up and sistering the joists, we still had some sag and too much bounce for me to be confident enough that the tile in the tub above would be stable enough. There's never been tile in the bathroom to prove/disprove my thoughts. Couldn't go with taller sistering as the ceiling height is already about 7'7". So we decided to add a beam in the middle of the kitchen to effectively shorten the span of the joists for the bathroom floor. Normally this would require footings in the foundation to support the extra load. But normally, beams carry a lot more weight.

We have approximately an 18 foot span for the worst joists. A beam would take approximately half the load if it's in the middle, meaning it supports 9 feet of joist. The beam in our case only needed to span across a few joists, giving it a 6.4 foot span. 6.4 * 9 is ~58 square feet that said beam is supporting. BUT, it's also supporting a sidewall for a dormer. The sidewall of a shed dormer should carry no load, so it's mostly just dead weight. Anyway, assuming 10 lbs PSF dead load, and 40 lbs PSF live load, (The state building code standard) we come up with 2900 lbs of support needed IF EVERY square foot of the floor above was loaded FULLY. Doing more calculations (accounting for the lack of floor over the stairway, etc) brought the realistic max load to about 2300 lbs, plus the dormer load.

Once again, we turned to LVL lumber. MAX-LAM 2.0 is the strongest LVL I've found. LVL is like plywood in normal lumber form. It's many layers sandwiched together with resin. Stronger than normal lumber and doesn't warp.

The goal was to use the shortest height beam and still be confident that it would handle the load.
Using a table from the LVL manufacturer, we found that the max load on a 6 ft span of a 5.5" tall beam would be VERY close to what we needed. Made some calculations with some help (Thanks Jon!) to make sure.

Local lumberyard had no 5.5" in stock, so they cut some 11 1/4" stock in half for me. I got 4 pieces. (2 pieces of 11.25" cut in half) 2 were used as the columns to support the beam. Since there would be 2 pieces remaining, we decided to double the beam thickness and then we were POSITIVE that the beam would MORE than handle the load. In fact the beam should then be able to handle close to 6000 lbs, which is about twice what we think it would actually be loaded to in a worst case scenario.

Part of the kitchen wall was ripped out to get access to the foundation. Ripped a piece of LVL to about 4" to match the studs in the wall. Ended up the best place to set it was right against another stud.

On the other side of the beam, there's a concrete pad in the floor that supports the chimney, water heater and furnace. We rested the other column on this concrete. This is how we cheated a bit in not having to pour a footing. Had to cut out existing flooring to get access to enough space on this concrete.

We *Again* jacked up the joists as best we could with jack posts, 4X6s and a bottle jack. This held the joists up as much as we could.

The columns were set in place for a mock-up. Then, using a string and a level, ran a line from the lowest hanging joist to each column to create a straight line all the way across. (Since the bottom of the joists were not straight.) With that line, I was able to measure and cut the columns. Set them in place and crossed my fingers. And to my surprise, the beam slid nicely in place the first time! So I nailed a mending plate in to hold the beam to the column on one side. On the other side I secured the beam to the adjoining stud. A mending plate will be added later when more of the kitchen wall is out. Then nailed the 2nd layer of beam on with nails sized and spaced per the LVL manufacturer's instructions.

Then, I used wood shims to make sure ALL of the joists in the span were making good solid contact with the beam. We carefully lowered the jack posts that were providing temporary support and loaded the beam. No noticeable flex, very little noise. But the beam is taught and definitely loaded. Project was a success! And the floor above is more solid than I imagined it could be! Probably more than it ever has been since the house was built.

First picture shows the inside column.














The second picture shows the outside wall side.















The third picture shows the beam. Notice the shims in place between the beam and the joists.














This was the last thing to do before we could make some major progress IN the bathroom. (FINALLY!) The next thing is to frame a wall that will become one side of the tub alcove. Then the current tub will be destroyed and removed so we can build the wall for the other side of the alcove.

But first, I need to go take care of the snow.

Jacking and Sistering joists

Our first major project was to jack up and sister some 2nd floor joists so we could work on the bathroom above them. The joists were only 2X6. 2 of them made about a 17 foot span with no real support. That long a span should have 2X12 joists by today's standards!

Others had terrible notching. We discovered some awkward attempts at repairing some of the problem.

Since the kitchen ceiling is less than 8 feet hight to begin with, the easy fix of sistering with 2X10s or 2X12s was not an option. We decided to use 2X8s double sistered. (Sistering means adding another joist on the side of an existing one) We also used LVL lumber one one side of each of the long spans. LVL is an engineered lumber thats part wood, part resin. It's basically 50% stronger than regular lumber of the same size. It's also thicker (1.75" thick)

First the kitchen ceiling was removed with some help. Dusty, messy work.

Then, we put down a couple 2X8s on the floor to spread the weight out as much as possible. (These crossed the whole room, spanning as many floor joists as we could.) A 4X6 beam was put on top of those.

Then we made up spacers for the beam that would do the jacking so the new taller joists could be slid right in.

The upper 4X6 and two heavy duty Jack Posts were put in place as close as we could get to the middle/worst part of the span. We raised the beam up with the posts until the house started complaining by making nice cracking sounds.

Over the course of a couple weeks, we slowly raised it up. We raised the joists until the 4X6 beam was bending and compressing with increased load instead of the joists moving up more. The house said that's as far as we were going.

http://hammerzone.com/archives/framecarp/supplement/floor/joist1/sister.htm

http://hammerzone.com/archives/framecarp/supplement/floor/joist1/raising.htm

Great reference above for doing this kind of work.

We ended up using 3 jackposts and a couple 4X6s. Over the course of the raising, we raised the worst part over an inch or so.

Later went on to find out that there was more load on one of those joists than we thought, which was impeding our progress.

A little history

In October 2006, we for some reason decided to start looking at houses. Cheap houses. Cheap run down houses. We looked at a few. Found that we liked a particular neighborhood. Looked at 2 others in the neighborhood that were out of our range. (Too much work needed, etc) Decided to just look at a few more. Came across this one. Certainly needed some work, but was livable. Worst house on the block. (Perfect!) We put in an offer that was accepted.

Inspection found that the furnace was junk, and not burning too clean. 900 PPM of Carbon monoxide was going up the flue. (35 is about the safe limit for exposure more than a few minutes) Any back draft or blockage and we'd be dead pretty quick! Our realtor knew an HVAC guy that could get us a deal. We split the $1200 bill for a new furnace and install with the seller.

Closed on the house November of 2006.

900 SF, 2BR, 1BA, no Basement, 2 Car size garage, normal city yard (no alley, which is a plus!) and was built ~1920.