Episode II: Doorlink strikes back!

Bill Lantry

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Well, folks,

You knew it would happen after the whole festool thing: Doorlink wants results! Not directly from the saw, but indirectly on her projects. It's downstairs bathroom time. Ouch!

bathroom 001 (Medium).jpg


bathroom 002 (Medium).jpg


bathroom 003 (Medium).jpg


bathroom 004 (Medium).jpg


bathroom 005 (Medium).jpg

The whole story coming soon... ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
Oh, good! You finally got the floor part on the bottom. :eek: :eek: :eek:

No wonder she wanted you to get going on that project! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Must have been real hard to use, laying its side like that. :bonkers: :bonkers:
 
Oh, good! You finally got the floor part on the bottom. :eek: :eek: :eek:

No wonder she wanted you to get going on that project! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Must have been real hard to use, laying its side like that. :bonkers: :bonkers:
Whew! I thought someone was messen' with my scotch!

I agree with Doorlink - this room needs an upgrade, and uprighting.:D
 
So, more details...

It was pink when we moved in. Doorlink ordered new wallpaper long ago (there's a square of it hanging up on the left). Until this weekend, all I'd done was to put in a new cabinet (you can just see part of it in the extreme left). When we moved in, there was a wall oven on the north wall of the kitchen. Once I got her new double oven cabinet made, I took out that oven, and discovered there was a 32" by 30" floor to ceiling space. So I cut through the bathroom wall to open it up, framed it out, and built an internal cabinet in place. Sliding doors on the bottom, recessed doors and shelves on top. Then other projects took over...

So saturday we bought all the stuff, which is how she gets me going. Sunday I started going after it. As you may have heard, the university is having a visitor this week, and I'm involved with that, and Doorlink is in the choir singing at the national stadium (her mother is thrilled she gets to sing with Placido), so things are really crazy right now, but as the saying goes "there's never a good time". Anyway, the sink came out without too much trouble, but I needed to replace all the 40 year old plumbing fixtures.

The toilet was another story. Wrestled with it a long time, finally gave up on one of the tank bolts and just brute-forced it off. Then the base. One nut came off, the other would just spin. No room to get a hack saw in there... after nearly an hour of uttering bad words, I broke out the angle grinder and fixed that bolt's wagon... ;) The lighting was bad until those sparks started flying. After that, no problem seeing the work site... ;)

Then the old tile... oh, my goodness. They just poured mortar over the subfloor and then thinset the tile down. I guess cement board didn't exist back then. Doorlink suggested I just take a hammer and break up each individual piece. Yikes! After I got the first piece out, I took a big (BIG) screwdriver and whacked it with a hammer to get it under each piece, and pop it up. It took a while. At one point, I counted hammer blows for each tile... averaged about 20. Nine tiles a square foot, times 20 blows each, times 20 square feet and we're talking 3,600 hammer blows. Should have broken out the air chisel... ;)

It made a complete mess of the surface. And when we unwedged the threshold (using a japanese pull saw to cut off just a little of the doortrim to get that piece of old marble out), well, that part of the subfloor was even worse. I could look through it to the basement. Got that sealed up enough to accept new thinset. Then I broke out the tile saw, and a brand new diamond blade, to cut the new piece of marble Doorlink picked out for the threshold.

That was a nightmare. I'd get a good cut, all the way to the last half inch, then the piece would break. Did that three times, even with Doorlink supporting the long end. Finally got an acceptable trim cut on one side, and went to cut it to length. It happened again... not bad, but not perfect either. Very frustrating. It will be where no one will see it, but I'll know it's there. Rats. But got down the layer of thinset, and got the durn thing fixed in place.

Then, it was time to do something about the surface. Back to the borg for self-leveling compound. I'd never used it before, so had to do some web research. Like most things, they make it sound way more complicated than it is. Ended up mixing the entire bag, and using about 80% of it. By then it was 9:00, and I just put a baby gate across the doorway, and tried to call it a night. Of course, young James tried to storm the battlements, but luckily he was repulsed, and the floor looked pretty good this morning...

This evening, I get to start cutting the new marble tile to fit. Not looking forward to cutting the round section around the floor pipe for the toilet, but what can you do? Gotta find a way. Also, not looking forward to intalling the pedastal sink she picked out, but I've got many problems to solve before I get to that... ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
My my, Bill, but that was one ugly bathroom. Ugly with a capital "ugh".

I wonder what people were thinking when they put in these salmon pink, (or coffee brown, or olive green, or lavender-purple... I've seen all of those) bathroom fixtures. Give me plain white, or "bone", any day. I'll go with the colour on the walls, that is a lot easier to change.

oh, and thanks for rotating the pix.
...art
 
I really like the current sink. The 1950's poodle-pink toilet really speaks to me. At the very least, try to preserve those two key features. They really carry the "look" of the bathroom.

All kidding aside, we all must pay the price of all that blissful peace we garner from our time in the shop. Have fun with it.
 
Sounds like you're really having a blast and just wanna make it sound like you're not having fun. :D

Oh, and don't worry about snugging up real close to that toilet pipe. The John covers quite a lot of the floor around it when it is installed. Looks like it is coming along and that swatch of wallpaper Doorlink picked out is a Classy one.:thumb:
 
Well, Bill...
Having just recently finished a project like that, I can feel for you, buddy. Mine had a vinyl floor over luaun ply, so the floor tear-off wasn't so bad, but the fun ended when it came time to move the toilet 'just six inches to the right...' :doh: That involved taking down some of the basement ceiling, and re-doing the toilet floor flange and mating the new one to the shortened old pipe. (Fernco fittings are your friend!) then, patching the old hole in the subfloor and then putting down the new cement board and the new flooring. Also changed the sink style, and the new sink's drain didn't line up, so tear into the wall and re-do the sink drain.

All fun, and I didn't even get a new Festool out of it! :(
 
Bill I see that she also put all the new stuff in your shop.:thumb:
Looks to me like it is a you can have your shop back right after you put all this stuff in.:rofl::rofl:
 
So... is this a desease going around and we all caught it? I too spent much of the weekend putting a new floor in our small downstairs bathroom. No major toilet drain move like Jim, no morter to bust up like Bill. I got off easy... pry up old tiles, remove old adhesive with mineral spirits, clean up mineral spirits with detergent, light orbital sand, apply latex floor tile coat, next day lay new tile. Done.

Back to doorlinks revenge :)... buying tools and then having to show results. I had to justify buying my magic molder and set of carbide bits (about $170 all together), so knocked out about 20 sq ft of beadboard and put it over the counter in the kitchen last week. Used poplar since it is so paint friendly. Point being, ya buy tools and impress the wife, you can keep buying tools!!
beadboard.jpg


Bill, as far as cutting those round sections of tile that go around the toilet base, the professionals probably have a better idea, but I've had good luck drilling a series of holes in the tile along the curved line, then carefully breaking the tile off a piece of tile at a time, and then grinding it clean. Lot of work, I'm sure there is a better way, but that did work for the few I had to do.
 
Yep Bill, for sure not a fun project, but keep em going and at the end it will look beautiful. Who did this not, I mean such a project.
When I moved in my new home in 1983, I made a 5 years planning for doing different projects from off the top of the house till downstairs.
My biggest job was pulling down the entire bathroom laying just between two sleeping rooms, and I rebuild it till a complete new bathroom.
Well this enormous job take me than four month. So there is some hope for you, think of the reward you get from your wife after the job is done!! Anyway I got my reward then :)
 
Bill:

I've seen floor guys use a small (4" ? ) angle grinder with a diamond blade to cut the circle. Like someone said above - it doesn't have to be perfect - the toilet covers a lot of area around the drain.

They make jigsaw blades with carbide abrasive the can be used to cut clay tile - I did it in the last house's kitchen remodel. It the hole is in the middle of a tile drill a start hole and cut the circle. I don't know if the carbide works as well on marble as glazed clay tile - I imagine the marble is harder.

Will you use any Festool products in the reno?

Cheers

Jim
 
Thanks, everybody,

I got that done, it seems like ages ago now. Used a special diamond bit on the rotozip for the marble circles.

The only thing not done is the crown molding. I got the wood, got the bits, made six different profiles... none of which passed muster. I'm about to take her to the despot and say "just pick one!" That'll be cheaper in the long run, take WAY less time, and it won't be my fault! ;)

At least she approved the base molding I made, on the sixth try (as you can see, six is my limit on samples! ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
Sounds good, but pics would be nice...

I know what you mean on "samples". Sheesh, seems like it took us more time to finalize wallpaper color/pattern and crown style than it did to install..but I used "off the shelf" crown. Would like to make my own, but don't have any bits to do it. What bits did you use?
 
Greg,

I got them from this page:

http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/smarthtml/pages/bit_molding2.html

I got the horizontal crown molding bit (1783)

and the Multi-Molding Crown Molding Bit (7871)

Figuring that would pretty much let me make anything I wanted. Nope. Essentially, she wants an inverted roman ogee (hard to describe, but she drew it, and I threw up my hands! ;)

I've searched and searched, and can't find what she wants. Oh, well.

One of the reasons I wanted to make my own is that I know I'll mess up in the installation. If I make my own, well, big deal, I can just make more. If I buy premade molding, it'll start to add up pretty quick... :doh:

Thanks,

Bill
 
Bill,

Thanks for the link... I will be looking closer at some of those. I learned to make good junctions between boards....and bought a good tub of spackle...:eek: :rofl: Be sure to measure angles in each and every corner separately...I would almost guarantee they will be different. Rough framing and finish carpentry are different....:rolleyes: I found this to really be a challenging phenomenon when I was putting up wallpaper in our powder room..:doh:

Would like to see some pics of your room, if you have some. Always looking for other good ideas.

Greg
 
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