Well, After what has all happened this week, I can definitely say that I believe that my fathers hate for plumbing has genetically passed on. But regardlessof that fact, 90% of all plumbing for the basement bathroom is now complete. Where we had left off last week was that we had begun to start laying out the bathroom walls after dry locking them. Since then, we have plumbed to shower drain, then re-plumbed the shower drain & ran all of the lines that feed water into the bathroom and shower... here is where we are at:
We got the framing done, after than usally follows electrical, but since we were doing all of the electrical in the wall that hasn't been placed yet (the wall b/t the laundry room and the bath that we are leaivng out so we can coat the floor in the laundry room)we will actually be doing the electrical a little bit later. However for the remaining walls we insulated and got the vapor barrier up. Even around the shower got vapor barrier around it. This way we can keep any unnecessary moisture at bay.
Going back to the plumbing that I was talking about earlier; we had taken the time to send the shower drain pipe off our our main sewer line "redux" and then when I was ready we would begin to plumb in the shower. Well the first time we went to set-up the drain, we had two issues. One: the drain pipe was a whopping 3/4" over further than it should have been. Two, the bottom pipe of the Trap we had set up did not set with the PVC glue. So I had the privilege to dig up some of the previous faulty plumbing to make it right. Once it was all in I was able to test fit the bottom part of the 3-piece shower and then see how everything will line up...which is very very important when the shower assembled gives us 2" up top to play with for installation.
One of my wife's side projects was a creative use of the space below the stairs which i have to say is a really creative idea. We had found some cabinets on the side of the road i think 2 days after we signed for the house( and we shoved them in our 2 bedroom apt) but we were able to adapt one of the them to the shape and angle of the stairs, as well as use it to be built off of to create more storage space in the laundry room.
On an additional side note.. useful storage is better than 1950's era varnished wood paneling which we are in the process of trying to eliminate anywhere in the basement. A change of color was the most we could do for it in certain places, so we are going through the last part of the basement and priming the varnished pine and going to transform the colors to try to update them just a little bit...more photos to come later.
Back to the Shower and bath; I had a joyful time getting all of the copper pipping run to the appropriate places for the shower and the vanity. The bathroom is on one far end of the house, so when I had to shut the water off it took quite some time to drain the water out before I could make proper soldering connections that would not leak. After running back and forth turning the water on and off, I finally got all of the connections leak free...however I always sleep light the night after new plumbing or electric thinking every stray noise is something I have done going catastrophically wrong..still have been doing well.
For the shower, with it being a 3-piece it provided some smaller challenges. As I stated earlier..the ceiling in our bathroom was 82" high and we managed to only find 1 shower that would fit down our stairs and give us the size we wanted....but would be really tight at a height of 80". We pre-fit and drilled holes for the shower heads (yes... 2 heads...we figured why not?) before putting the whole shower together that way we would not chance wreaking the base of the shower from moving it so much. Another thing that we seemed to come across was the same problem we had in other places of our basement of the floor sloping. We were able to combat that by using some concrete and creating a level pad for the shower to set on. This includes a smaller set of pads in the back of the shower to support the "feet" in the back of the shower that hold the back half of the shower up and level. As you can see in the Left hand photo below.
When it came time to set the shower we first assembled the 3-piece shower to the way that it was when we bought it. Being careful not to scratch it as we placed in place, and had to utilize some extra help to make sure that it went into place. One other thing that we did to assure the firmness of the shower was to mix up a bag of sack-crete and pour it around what would be the bottom of the shower, to assure that the floor didn't feel like it was falling in when you took a shower. I apologize for the lack of photos of the shower install; but it was a situation where we were under a time crunch and it was crucial that we focus on getting the shower in right and did not think to take many pictures except for after the fact. Thanks for looking and we will keep you updated as our last few parts of our projects come into place.
No comments:
Post a Comment