Construction

When I last left you, I just moved officially out of the demolition and cleanup phase and into the construction phase. Things are moving along nicely (if not nearly fast enough for me), and we're covering two days of activity -- yesterday was broken up by a meeting with a student and with a very welcome dinner with some friends. 

Ideally, you'd make the whole wall out of a single piece of wallboard, but that's tricky here for two reasons: one, since it's a bathroom, it really ought to have concrete board, which is very water resistant, and not regular wallboard, but they don't sell concrete board in sizes that big (3' x 5' is the norm); two, I have two 4' x 4' squares of perfectly nice wallboard sitting in the garage from the last remodel, and now I get to use them! (And three, I don't have a vehicle that will fit the standard 8' x 4' sheet of wallboard anyway -- and you know what happens when you try to fit things into cars too small for them!) Anyway, the trick here is trying to cut the wallboard so it will perfectly fit around everything that is not wall: electrical sockets, windows, pipes, etc. 

So, after three tries, always going back for slight adjustments, we were good to go -- my only regrets are those two little cutouts above the window ledge; they turned out to be totally unnecessary. In the picture above, the wallboard's not even screwed in -- it's just hanging on the top edge of the window.

Here you see the more or less final product -- the bottom half is joined by fiberglass tape and thinnest mortar, while the wallboard portion is joined by the same tape and joint compound. Tomorrow, all of this should be dry, and I will sand things smooth, and deal with the corners -- actually, they're partially dealt with already; the gaps between the old side walls and the new back wall have mostly been filled with backing rod and that crazy foam stuff you spray into gaps and then it expands like crazy (the brand I'm using is called TiteFoam by LocTite, because awl tha wordz mussst b mis-pelled -- and it ought to be TiteFōm, anyway), that also went around the pipes, which you can sort of see in the second picture. 

Rummaging around in the basement to see what other goodies I had unhand from previous projects I came across an old tub of hydraulic cement. And there was just enough left to deal with something that's been bugging me -- there's a gap of a ¼ to ⅓ of an inch between the floor and the wall. That wasn't an issue for the linoleum, but it could be for tile, which likes to break wherever anything isn't perfectly level. So, more backing rod and the remaining cement and that gap is filled.

Tomorrow, I'll fill in the missing chunks of corners with patching compound (plaster of Paris with other chemicals), which is slightly dangerous stuff. As it sets, it gets hot, hot enough to really burn you, but it also becomes rock hard and adheres to the skin. Evidently, every year someone with a broken arm decides to just do a homemade cast, rather than paying doctors with thar fancy book-larnin'. It doesn't end well. Anyway, it's really important not to touch it, and not to breath the powder when you sand it either (it's done being hot at that point -- it just gives you cancer). 

Anyway, patching compound for the corners, sanding (wearing a full respirator, followed by a thorough vacuuming and airing), then joint compound, tape and more joint compound (if necessary -- we'll see how it looks with just the patching compound). A lot of cleanup and general sanding of most everything. At that point, I'll probably start getting ready to tile the floor by leveling the floor, which needs an overnight dry.

Friday, if all goes well, a coat of thin-set, the layer of Ditra (you'll be impressed when you see the crazy fluorescent orangeness of it), and once that's set, the tile can go down in more of the thin set. The main thing between then and now is me learning how to use an angle grinder to cut tile. 

Porcelain is about the hardest stuff there is, and you need a diamond blade for it, which you see on the upper left. My previous experience with tile cutters is that they didn't work, so from what I've read, this little (and relatively inexpensive) guy will do the trick. I will probably spend some time practicing on a couple of cheap tiles from Home Depot before I start on the Ann Sacks stuff (among other things, I have only just enough of that, with very little margin for error); wait a day, then grout, then wait a day. In theory, there could be a floor by Monday, although I'd be surprised if the schedule actually works out that well. Still, fingers crossed. 

And I'll leave you with some more Kitty, as usual, perched next to the new angle grinder: