Deep Soak Tub

Not really. Just our plumbing passing the rough-in test.

The rough in plumbing is DONE. Now I have a trunk full (literally) of unneeded fittings to return.

Holland Preview?

This was a little surprise this evening.  How long has this one hung on?  Must be about 15 years now.  It was out back under the dogwood.

Moving Day

Today was moving day for all cabinets, bookcases, and "stuff" in the parts of the house where Pieter will refinish the floors.  Angela helped all day.  We finished the plumbing in the morning--it was a HUGE help to have a second set of hands and PVC cement brushes for the bigger pipes in the basement--and then we moved everything in about three hours the afternoon.

I didn't take any action shots, but thought you might like to see some of the results.

Lots more room for dining

Looks like a bachelor pad for sure now!

Look! We can walk behind the piano!

That is three cabinets and a coffee table deep

Eleanor, your room took the brunt of the small stuff.

If you are lucky I will clear your bed before you return.

You already heard that we finished the plumbing.  OK, almost finished.  The bathtub leaked slowly at the drain, so I need to redo it with thread sealant and try again.

Yesterday I worked primarily on wiring.  I have nearly all the wire pulled now.  The vent fans are completely installed and wired.  With the plumbing and the wiring rough-ins almost ready I am only a few hours from being able to put all the tools away and do a serious cleanup.

I also made time this weekend to finish the last batch of cabinet doors and drawer fronts for the girls' room:

Jeremy's New Mattress

Jeremy,

I saw that you didn't think much of the soft, lumpy mattresses in Venice, so I took a little time today to replace your mattress with something a little smoother and firmer.

Those are the granite slabs from the tops of the bunny boxes.  Angela helped me move them.  Today was the day we moved the bunnies into your room, and we needed a place to put the tops.  Your mattress is on James' bed so that Joy can't chew it or worse.

We also used the bunny boxes to block the bunnies from getting under the desks.

Hiding Things

Another Round of Painting Done

I finished the second round of painting doors and drawer fronts. These are for the girls' bedroom. This was a daunting batch: a lot of pieces and a lot of inset panels.

There is another batch of them to go, but at least the remaining pieces are smaller.

A Little Progress

I started the day by finishing off the framing for the skylight.  I wanted to work on it while there was good light but before it got hot.  Here is the finished product.  It looks so great I might not put sheetrock on it.

And here are a few of the offcuts:

My next goal was to permanently place the tub.  It kind of needs to be in one place if I'm going to attach a drain line to it.

Placing the tub requires shims.  You need to build the studs out to the thickness of the tub so the wall material will be flat when it comes down over the rim.  I had a half-sheet of 1/4" plywood that was waiting for just such an opportunity.  A few minutes with the table saw and...

Other than the fact that I had to do it at all, putting up the shims was fun.  Easy to cut and instantaneous to put up thanks to the brad gun.  Ta-da: shims installed, and the tub screwed to the studs:

That's funny.  The textured bottom is currently almost invisible to the naked eye but it shows up like crazy in the picture.

The faucet end needed thicker shims to make up that inch.  It took three different thicknesses because the wall wasn't straight.  I didn't put up that wall.

Did I show you this phone from the other day?  When I put the tub in place I discovered that the floor is way out of level side to side.  Those are plastic shims to level it.  I will trim them off near the edge of the tub, and they will end up covered with tile.

After the tub I work a little while on placing electrical boxes but that was just because I was trying to find some more things I needed so I wouldn't have to go to the hardware store for just two plumbing fittings.  It didn't work, though. I couldn't make much progress when I knew that I had plumbing to finish.

I ended up going to the hardware store twice anyway, because when I got home and started working on the drains downstairs I figured out that I had forgotten to put in the vent in the wall behind the girls' toilet, and of course I needed some different pieces for that.  I ended up not finishing the drain lines, but I did get everything from the girls' toilet back to the main drain cemented and nearly everything else dry-fit.  Only an hour or two of plumbing left before I get to pressure test it.

You can see the new connection to the main drain at the upper left:

And finally, I am not the only one working on his house.  Magic has turned her hollow log into a tunnel.  The landscaping doesn't show up as well as I would like in the photo.