Tag: New England

AS THE CENTER OF ATTENTION IN OUR BATHROOM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In explaining our rotten floor worries, my wife would tell others she didn’t want to find our bathtub crashing down onto the dining room table below. Meaning our cast-iron bathtub, the one that came with the house.

The one that drained poorly, at best, and required plunging and rooting once a week or more and constant cleaning of the screen to catch hair at the drain.

It wasn’t even attractive in an antique sort of way. No claw-foot style, no insulating layer for deep baths, either. And then there were the cold drafts from above.

A bathtub, of course, is the centerpiece of a bathroom. You might substitute a shower alone, but ideally you want a bath-and-shower combination, which is where we were starting.

Determining where the floor moisture was originating and how much damage had occurred would necessitate moving the tub. Was it worth salvaging? No. So make that removing the tub altogether.

The project nearly died right there. Need we mention psychological depression? Despair?

Our carpenter informed us he couldn’t take it out – that would be up to the plumbers, who replied they thought that was his job. And then, with a good deal of swearing and sweat, they relented, busting up the tub with sledgehammers that shook the whole house and likely more.

The floor underneath had escaped moisture damage, but the related piping was another matter. We haven’t seen brass pipe like this in ages, the plumbers informed us, before adding: it could burst anytime, without warning. As for our drainage problem, the old-fashioned ball-drain trap – rather than the standard U? Ours had clogged to not quite a pencil width passage, so that a few stray hairs could create blockage. In other words, we were in for some major new pipes.

No turning back now. As tile and drywall, along with some plaster and lathe, came down and out, we had a clearer picture of what was at hand. A new tub would barely fit in the old spot, and that would take some finagling.

One thing we’d agreed on was our distaste for tile. Grout’s hard to keep clean, and it cracks. While we tried blaming the squirrels for the moisture leakage that led to the floor rotting, a better argument would point to tile failure, especially in the corner between the tub and toilet. Tile, too, is unrelentingly hard, should you drop something or, worse yet, slip.

After the plumbers told us they couldn’t install a one-piece tub-and-shower surround – they wouldn’t be able to get it up the stairs, much less through the doors – we accepted their advice to buy a tub with a matched shower-surround, a three-piece unit that would snap in place. Which was fine until we discovered that would mean losing the window in the room, the one that also provided most of the natural light to the hallway. Cutting into the surround would be difficult, at best. More likely, impossible if we wanted acceptable results. No thank you, there’s enough funky work here already.

Everybody kept suggesting we reconsider tile.

We wound up turning to a composite masonry that could be cut for the window opening. It cost about three times as much as the surround, before we added in the extra labor, and wouldn’t snap into the tub as neatly as the matched unit, either, but it wasn’t tile. But tile would not have created as much dust as cutting this stuff did, either.

Our original plan, to take the composite all the way to the ceiling, failed to calculate the angles of getting the panels into place. As we tried to maneuver the precisely cut units, reality sunk in. So it was back to the masonry saw … and all that much more dust. And that was before tackling the adhesive that would hold the units to the wall – for all eternity, we’d hope.

Well, the new tub’s deeper and drains like a dream. I love the broad stream from our new shower head. We still have our window.

But there are more funky fine points than I’ll care to admit. And the remodeled room is hardly showy – certainly not what you’d expect for the price, which I’ll keep private. I’d rather say we did the best we could under the circumstances. And please don’t tell me about that “old house charm.” You’ll have to understand if we scream.

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.

 

HERE COMES THE SNOW AGAIN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

New England can be a harsh place. Its winter is long, with snow possible October into April or even longer, at least where I live.

You’re never far from earlier generations, either. They’re hardy as stone.

Each month sinks down through centuries.

As do the poems in this almanac.

The new year’s just around the corner. For your own copy, click here.

Winged Death 1~*~

A FULLER SEQUENCE OF RELATED RENOVATIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From the outset, we could see our bathroom project would encompass more than just the second-floor chamber in question itself. Other crucial home repair issues of longer standing would finally demand attention in the sequence of labor at hand.

For starters, the bulkhead to the cellar had to be replaced. Bulkhead? In many old houses, it’s the entryway to the cellar, from outdoors. (Note that I say cellar and not basement – in my mind, cellars flood and require a sump pump. You don’t put a Ping Pong table down there much less try to “finish” a room.) Our bulkhead’s plywood covering had rotted badly and was padlocked from the outdoors. (Where was the key these days, anyway?) A temporary plywood layer, covered in plastic, had been dropped over the bulkhead several years ago to prevent anyone from falling through to the stairway below. As I said, temporary.

The bulkhead? What’s that got to do with the second-floor, you ask?

Just start with the plumbers who would have to access the plumbing under the house. And then let’s add the carpenter’s need to have a place to set up his table saw and similar shop work.

So replacing the bulkhead turned into a multiday opening round to enable other stages. In an old house like ours, with all of its amateur “improvements,” finding anything on the market that will fit our existing conditions can be a challenge. As we found, accommodating the nearest-size metal unit would mean building the entry wall up another foot – a good move anyway, considering the way water moves around the house … or into it. Water flowing into the cellar, if you haven’t already guessed, is not good. The bulkhead we found at Home Depot was half the price of the one at our locally owned lumberyard. That’s not always the case, in these projects, but it did sway our decision.

One down, many others to go.

At one time before we bought the house, a first-floor cubbyhole had contained a small toilet, shower, and vanity, but these were no longer usable, separated by a second section where our clothes washer and dryer were jammed in. Once our upstairs bathroom was torn up, we’d need a toilet, at the least. (We could use my mother-in-law’s shower in her apartment in the barn or, more likely for me, the ones at the indoor pool where I swim most days.) So restoring the toilet was added to the picture, for use while the upstairs work was being done. Follow this?

We’d have the toilet from upstairs moved to the first floor so the upstairs work could continue, and then return upstairs when the bathroom itself was completed and our attention turned to the downstairs space.

In the bigger picture, this space – two small connected rooms, actually – could be transformed. If we removed the useless shower, with its rotting floor and falling tile, we could use that corner for a stacking clothes washer and dryer, which would then free up the entryway for a food pantry and broom closet, where the vacuum cleaner might also reside. (Whew!) A usable toilet here, of course, would be a welcome convenience, especially when we had company over. Let’s just call that the Utility Room Project, steps one and two.

While we were at it, under the house, we’d need to address our dying hot-water heater and sump pump, which takes us back to the cellar and that bulkhead. And since we had the electrical lines in the bathroom already exposed, we decided to rewire an adjacent bedroom where only one outlet functioned.

As I’m becoming ever fonder of saying, the plot thickened.

It’s hardly worth mentioning the overdue hallway repainting that moved up on the list.

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.

ALL ON THE JOB, MEANING ALL THE GUYS, IF WE CAN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Ideally, we would have simply signed up with one contractor to redo the bathroom. Somebody with carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and flooring crew all on one sheet – come in, rip it out, replace it, and be gone in a day or two.

As I said, ideally. It’s not what you typically encounter, especially in an older house. Want an estimate? Everything depends on the unknown terrors hiding behind the walls or under the floor. Surprise, surprise.

What we found in practice as we set out this time around was that the plumbers were in an uncommonly busy period, compounded by a heart attack or two. And suddenly the flooring crew was flush with assignments. What should have been a two-week undertaking expanded into two months – over Christmas, at that. And that fell into just the bathroom part of a bigger campaign. As my wife learned, you can spend a lot of time playing telephone tag.

We’re not even talking Martha Stewart. We’re talking real life where we live. (Who knows how they do this in Europe. Or South America. Or Asia.) At least we didn’t have to consider bribery or physical violence.

A bathroom, after all, is the height of civility.

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.