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.

Master Bath - Part 16

We're getting closer.

Thursday the countertop got installed along with the sinks.  We looked around at different options including engineered products, but decided that a natural stone product was the way to go in this room.  Crema Marfil was it.  It has just enough variation to be interesting without getting too wild.

While we were waiting for the counters I did all the preparation for the millwork: sand, fill the nail holes, sand again, prime, and caulk the gaps.

Friday I took the the day off  and started painting the millwork which is why you see all the builder's paper and tape everywhere.  Hopefully I'll finish bathing everything in Impervo today.

Sash Ribbons (Tapes?)

Once again, our house is special.  I guess I knew that already, but here's another reminder.

The topic of "Never before seen sash 'ribbon'" came up on The Historic District recently.  The person posting the question had only seen double-hung windows balanced with cord or chain, never a metal ribbon or tape.

Double hung windows need some mechanism to keep them open.  There are a number of different ways to accomplish this, including some sort of counterbalance mechanism.  Typically a sash cord runs over a pulley near the top of the window opening.  One end of the cord is attached to an appropriately sized weight and the other is attached to the sash.  The sash end is usually knotted to that the knot fits into a mortise in the edge of the sash and doesn't come loose.  Sometimes, sash chain is used rather than cord.

Occasionally, you'll see a "tape balance".  Rather than a pulley, a spring-loaded cartridge is mortised into the jamb near the top of the window.  The cartridge and spring will be sized for the weight of the window and play out the proper amount of metal ribbon.

Our windows use a normal counter-weight and pulley system, but use a metal ribbon instead of cord or chain.  Apparently, this is rare.

The first photo shows a broken ribbon from a couple of years ago when I was restoring the Music Room.  Note that the face of the pulley between the flanges is flat; evidence that it was meant for ribbon rather than cord or chain.

The next photo shows how the ribbon is attached to the weight inside the weight pocket.  It's turned back on itself to make a loop for the weight hook.

The last photo shows how the ribbon is attached to the edge of the sash.  It's turned back on itself around the buckle which is then pressed into the mortise so it doesn't come loose.  There's a small nail whose head also helps keep the buckle in the mortise.

The sash ribbons in the kitchen are steel; a magnet will stick to them.  I haven't tested the material on the other windows, though.  The ones in the latter two photos don't look like steel to me.  Doing some internet searching, apparently the ribbons were made out of one of two materials: steel or aluminum-bronze.

Over the period we've been in the house I've tried to find a source for the ribbon, but have so far struck out.  If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Master Bath - Part 15

After installing the corner cabinet yesterday, I worked on the base moldings today.

The baseboard is a simple poplar 1x6.  Those were installed before lunch.

Little Man "eased" the edge with some sandpaper while I went to the Big Green Box to get various supplies for later.  Those included wood filler for all the nail holes and construction adhesive for attaching the base molding between the vanity cabinets. I can't nail there for fear of puncturing the radiant heat manifolds...

After lunch, Little Man and I installed the base cap.  I'll check in the morning to see whether we need any base shoe in here or not.

I also filled all the nail holes before supper; the filler has to cure before I do anything else.  Then sand off the excess filler and I can begin priming everything.

Master Bath - Part 14

All week I've been messing with this corner cabinet. And I finally have it mostly installed today.

By mostly, I mean that the crown molding still needs to be installed. Otherwise it's done.  I'm going to practice my miter cuts on the base moldings first, though...

This corner cabinet is actually four pieces, which explains the messing about all week.

The four parts are:

• the center part with the shelves and door
• the toe kick
• the two wing pillars

The cabinet guy, Sean, was nice enough to provide some cleats cut at 45-degree angles for attaching the wings to the main cabinet.  I had to dry fit things several times to measure where additional cleats needed to go on the walls, both behind the wings and at a 45-degree angle behind the shelf unit.  The cleats gave me something to screw into to attach the whole assembly to the walls.

Now, on to the base moldings!

The Big Orange Box

I suppose I should have given this post a different title.  It was supposed to be about how to "scribe" the strip that goes between the cabinet and the wall.  Otherwise you end up with an uneven gap along the wall, as in the first photo.

That process is well described elsewhere - just google "scribe cabinets" and it will return a bunch of links (this one even shows how to make your own scribing tool!).  Done right, the strip, in this case the pillar, matches up perfectly with the profile of the wall resulting in no gap.

I ended up using my daughter's compass from geometry class because they sell a cr@ppy plastic one that won't hold it's setting at The Big Orange Box.

Also, I have a nice jack plane (big one in the photo), but wanted a one-handed block plane to do this scribing.  The only one they carried at The Big Orange Box was a "cheap" one (small one in the photo), so I had no other choice.

I wasn't thrilled with the performance of the little one, so I used my big one; the quote "this is not a precision tool" comes to mind.  Perhaps it will work better if I hone the cutting edge before its next use, but should I really have to mess with a new tool to get it to work right?

Then, to get the spacing uniform between the cabinets, I wanted some thin shims to use as spacers.  These would have been perfect.

So I went to the store looking to buy a few.  Ten should have been more than enough.  But as you can see, they come in bundles of one hundred.  There were several broken bundles in the store so grabbed what I needed and headed to the checkout.  I caused much puzzlement with several cashiers.  You see, the individual shims are not marked with a UPC barcode.  The could sell me 10 shims at the "bundle of 100" price.  Each!  That's $84.30 for those that are math challenged...  But dividing the case price by 100 was apparently too complicated.

Needless to say, those babies are still at the store and I found a different way to accomplish my goal.

I wonder if I'm going to have the same problem with these.  I need only one and The Big Orange Box only sells them in bags of twenty five...

I'm in there so often, the staff should shout my name when I walk in, like Norm from Cheers...

Perhaps my 76 cents will get spent where I can "Save Big Money"...

Man, I miss Seven Corners already.

The Cass Gilbert Experience - Post Postscript

During the tour, one of the guests asked about a website that talked about plaster repair.  I pointed them towards Big Wally's Plaster Magic which is a product I haven't tried yet, but will be soon.  There's a spot in the master bedroom that this should work for.

Now I find out the guest on the tour was actually asking about where I'd heard about the product (though that wasn't really communicated very clearly).

So if you're out there and reading this, the two forums were Old House Web and Wavy Glass.  I wouldn't bother with either of them, though; they've both been overrun by spammers and are now zombies.

A better place to find other old house lovers, blogs, and tips is thehistoricdistrict.org.

Master Bath - Part 13

Last week, the correctly made piece of glass arrived for the shower surround.  The installer came back and installed it, along with the shower door.

The door swings both in and out, but we'll have to be careful that it doesn't hit the shower valve or head when we swing it in.

During the week I dry-fit the cabinets along the one wall before fully installing them over the weekend.

Since these have a pre-installed front apron in the toe kick, leveling was a bit different than normal.  Normally you'd shim-up the low side, but the floor drops half an inch over the width of the cabinet on the left.  It would look pretty funny to have a half inch gap under the "foot" on one side.  So I shaved some off the bottom on the other instead.

Scribing the pillars to the wall on each end didn't take too long, though.

However, it was a lot of messing about to get the gaps between each piece to be uniform so that the whole assembly looked right and spanned the length of the wall.

Now that these are installed I can move to the corner cabinet that will be directly behind me in the second photograph.