Back Bathroom Remodel

This week we got a break in the weather long enough for me to get up on the roof again and finish up the last little bit of siding work on the south gable over the front porch. I still need to install the fascia but I’m going to leave that off until Oceana paints because it will give her a touch more working room without it. After finishing the siding, I turned my sights to the small front stoop roof that Bob had worked on. There were a few things left to be done, including taking all of the new roofing off to figure out what had been done and why.

Why is there a hump in the metal?

There was a hump in the roofing where the two roofs met, which didn’t quite make sense. We used the same thickness plywood so it should have been a smooth transition. After removing the existing metal roof, I figured out why. Instead of removing the drip edge (the piece of metal trim where the roof meets the fascia) where the new roof butts into the existing porch roof, Bob just bent it up and laid it on the new roof. This created quite a hump. As I unscrewed the roofing water poured out. This is because it was holding water under the metal roofing – not good.

Metal roofing – done

I removed enough screws from the existing porch roof to get clearance to properly remove the remaining drip edge. Once that was gone, I installed new drip edge around the perimeter of the new stoop roof. Next, I installed the big panels of roofing in the main area of the stoop, leaving just the two small rips to the outside. I set pieces in place and scribed the crooked measurement onto the new panel. I cut the two pieces and installed them in place. Some of the roofing was re-used from the shop, so it had a bunch of extra screw holes. I installed screws in those holes to keep it from leaking. Done for now. It was starting to get hot up here again.

Priming

Oceana waited for a cool morning to do the priming work. She got a coat of primer on the new siding as well as the on the underside of the soffits. There’s no good access to this so she was laying down for most of it.

Goodbye back bathroom

With rain most afternoons, we’ve begun more interior work. On Monday, we tore out the old back bathroom. We took it all the way back down to the framing. I unhooked the pedestal sink and we got rid of it once and for all. I’m glad to see it go. We disconnected the toilet and set it off to the side to be installed later since it’s brand new. I smashed the tile off of the metal shower walls and Oceana bagged it while I rested. Once the tile was gone, we dismantled the shower piece by piece. We didn’t have to disconnect the shower floor from the drain – it was already rusted through all the way around!

Nasty old insulation

After the shower was out, we started tearing out the drywall. The walls were fine, but there was a layer of disintegrated insulation over the ceiling. When I pulled the ceiling drywall down, a huge cloud of brown dust went everywhere. Nasty stuff. We got it cleaned up and called it a night.

Tying in the drain lines

Yesterday I started the enjoyable process of digging a trench to tie in the new drain lines. We’re going to change the layout of the bathroom as well as re-pipe the entire bathroom, so that means we need new drain lines. At some point in time, the majority of the main drain line up to the septic tank had been replaced with PVC. This is good. Somewhere just outside of the bathroom, it tied back into the old cast iron drains. I wanted the cast iron gone. So I dug down until I found the connection and then dug over to where the drain was going to come up for the toilet. That was my primary target.

Preparing for future tie ins

While doing these connections, I decided to complicate matters a bit by making sure tying into this line in the future would be easy. I want a bathroom in the shop, and the drain lines will need to be tied into the drain from the septic tank. To make my future life easy, I installed a black rubber fernco wye fitting. Right now, I will use this fitting as an access point for a clean out. When I’m ready to tie in, I’ll just loosen the hose clamps and roll the fitting which will give me access to tying in the drain pipes from the shop. Simple. I worked between the bathroom and the outside trench to get the pipes lined up. Once I was happy, I glued everything up. With the pipes glued up, I backfilled the trench.

The bathroom crawl space

To make the plumbing easier, during the demo we removed all of the old pine flooring from the bathroom. The crawl space is super tight below this bathroom so this will help make the job easier. However, with the flooring removed, I found a small opening that allowed me to see below the floor framing in the back bedroom. There is no access to the crawl space below this room, and now I know why. There’s a concrete pad a few inches below the floor framing. There’s also a concrete pad below the front bedroom – but there’s about 2′ of clearance under the floor joists.

My theory

Here’s my theory….This side of the house used to be a double garage. One parking spot was accessed from the back of the house. The second parking spot was accessed from the front of the house. Since there’s nearly 2′ of grade height difference between the two, they laid a block retaining wall and made a stoop with steps to divide the two areas. This created a curb for the back parking space to keep you from rolling off the drop off. At some point in the future, someone decided to enclose the back parking area to turn it into a bedroom. Then later yet, someone wanted to enclose the front bedroom. And then lastly, the bathroom was added on to the back bedroom. This progression is based on the location of exterior siding between rooms.

Odds and ends

One of these days I want to layout a set of “addition” plans for the house to show the progression of the original structure (which I’ve finally figured out) and the multitude of additions that happened to the structure over time. In other random news, the chickens seem to really like the nesting boxes! We also had a turtle try and burrow into the sand by the banyan tree stump – likely to lay eggs. That poor girl didn’t realize the tangle of roots that was there, so I’m not sure if she was successful or not. And if you ever have to tie in cast iron drain pipe to PVC drain pipe, wrapping asphalt shingles around the cast iron and securing it with zip ties is evidently an approved method. Or at least it was here….that’s all for this week. As always, thanks for following along!