Plumbing

The plumbing became quite the saga over the past couple of weeks.

A while back the plumber came and installed the toilet, shower heads, and lavatory faucets.  He was missing parts for the tub and hot water recirculator, so needed to come back later.

As part of checking things out during the install, a bunch of crud came out of each fixture.  He took it to get tested and it tuned out to be lime scale.  After investigating to determine the source, it turns out that the water heater was way past its useful life and a third full of mineral deposits.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it's one of the few remaining appliances that we hadn't yet replaced.  So he ordered a new one to be installed when they came back later to finish the tub.

A few days later I happened to be down in the basement gathering stuff for another project and noticed a decent sized puddle in the corner where the drain lines for the sinks were.  I checked the pipes themselves for the source of the leak with no joy.  But I notices they tapped into the drain for the old kitchen sink in the basement.  Now, that drain probably hasn't had a sink connected to it since before the 1980s.  There's no telling whether it works or not.

Turns out not.

When they came back, they tried to snake it with no success.  So they re-routed the pipe in the basement over to where it could catch the stack for the toilet.  Problem solved.

They also finished installing the tub, the water heater, and the hot water recirculator.

Texting SWMBO at 7pm the night before to see if the electrician (me) had installed the outlet for the pump caused a bit of panic.  I had to do some quick planning and run to the store to get parts that night.  I got it only half installed, so ran an extension cord until I could finish it up the next night.

The bathroom is now totally functional and in use.  And it's nice to have instant hot water.

We don't have window treatments, yet which explains the builder paper on the bottom sash of each window and the fabric samples taped to the casing.  I don't need the neighbors getting too excited every time I'm in here...

This morning I finished installing the crown molding at the top of the corner cabinet.  It took longer than expected because during the installation I mis-measured and cut the pillars too short.  As a result I had to fabricate a filler piece for each side and shave it down to the correct thickness.

Now that we've seen the sashes in different types of light, I know I have to do a second coat on each one.  Hence the tape still on each pane of glass.  I have to re-install the bathroom doors and they have to be painted too, so I'll do the rest of the painting in one shot.

Mirrors

Back when we found the new sconces for the kids' bath we also found the mirrors for the master bath.  They've been patiently waiting to be installed. Yesterday I was finally able to install them.

We decided to go with matching mirrors over each of the sinks and a different one over SWMBO's makeup area.

The ones on either side had the hangers mounted symmetrically, so installing them was a breeze.  The center one, however, was a pain.  It doesn't have any straight edges and the hangers weren't mounted symmetrically on the back of the frame.  It took some mucking about to find the center-line and measure off of it to get everything plumb.  And similarly with the tom-line to get it level and set at the appropriate height.

As you can see, the plumber was here earlier in the week installing the plumbing fixtures.  Faucets, shower heads, and toilet is done.  The tub isn't quite done yet (see its reflection in the rightmost mirror) and a drain pipe is leaking in the basement, so there's still a bit of work to do...

And I'm slowly checking off items on my punch list, so it won't be long now...

Knobs

Over time, the knobs on the doors of the vanity in the kids' bath have slowly been breaking.  They are made from cheap pot metal and if anything hits them at an odd angle, they break off.  This photo is from the construction phase in the kids' bath; you can see that the molding under the wainscot cap isn't completely painted yet.

I'd briefly thought about trying to repair the knobs, but quickly realized it wasn't worth it.  There really isn't a good way to do it that will withstand normal wear and tear.

So we looked around at a few stores and found some different ones as replacements.  They have a similar color tone and detail.  The decorative escutcheon couldn't be re-used, so I'll have the fill the nail holes.  We'll also have to hit the cabinet with a little furniture polish or something to minimize the "ghost" lines from the perimeter of the escutcheons; they are mostly just from the collection of dust.

And while we were looking for replacement knobs, we were also looking for knobs for the master bath.

We needed 19 of them.

The ones on the cabinet doors went in fairly quickly; it took me perhaps a total of 10 minutes to install the ones on the 5 cabinet doors.

The ones on the drawers were a different story...

It took about two hours to install those.  The drawer face is not an integral part of the drawer box, so each face came off. Then I could locate the position of the knob, drill the hole, install the knob, and re-install the drawer face.  The face is adjustable so that you can align them properly, which had to be done anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal.