So adding to our tally of inspections that are signed off, and good news on the house front, we had our insulation signed off. That means framing, plumbing, electrical, mechanical and insulation are all passed. What does that mean? That means we can put up drywall… only…well, let’s start back a little bit.
We also managed to drag our less than light 1940s (most likely), cast iron salvaged bath into position which meant that both the shower in the little bathroom and the bath in the big bathroom could have their drains connected. So we did that.
Now in that process we had to make a hole for the bath drain to go through before putting the bath in position. Well, we could have put the bath in position, then marked it, then moved it, made the hole, then moved it back. Did I mention it’s cast iron? And incredibly heavy?
So instead we went with measuring and making the hole, then “sliding” the bath into position, then passing the drain through the bath and tightening it up from underneath. But this came with a few caveats. I, for some reason (which currently escapes me) decided to drill a hole that was really the minimum size I could get away with for the hole. I think I had vague thoughts about trying to minimise weakening of the floor, and that there are a lot of extra joists we threw under there to try and add more support and I hoped to avoid cutting into them…
Who knows. I thought it’d be big enough… but…
And because the bath was too heavy to lift I just felt the rim of the drain with my finger and thought it felt okay. See, I couldn’t really see it very well through the hole which… wasn’t big enough.
So I thought I’d get away with it, and that the seal would be good enough…
I mean, I don’t know what possessed me to think any of these things. Because it has literally never been true. I’ve always had a mare of a time sealing salvaged sinks and baths well. I’ve always needed to clean them thoroughly with sharp blades. I’ve often had to have several goes.
So I threw some water in the bath and it seemed to be staying there, so I let it drain. I’d already got cold and filthy grovelling under the house and we had above-ground stuff to do, so I thought I’d recheck it the next day. So yesterday I threw a bucket of water in the bath and left it to sit for a while. It seemed okay…
….and then I went under the house an hour or two later and found… a puddle of water and a slow, steady drip from under the bath. Fuck.
So I got to grovel round in the filthy water (pooled on the muddy upper surface of the old, filthy vapour barrier). I ended up hacking the floor to bits with totally inappropriate tools, because the bath sits very low to the ground so the pilot bit of our big hole drilling drill bits would foul on the bottom of the bath – so I abused the hell out of my smaller Forstner drill bits to make a few holes around the original hole – which allowed me to pull out more floor, which allowed me to get the blade in to scrape the bottom of the bath and the pipe wrench in. I’m also not convinced the drain’s really the right size.
I ordered it based on it being the only one I could find that didn’t require a threaded hole and being roughly the right size, but I feel like a 1.5″ drain would actually probably fit fine, and possibly be a better fit. So that’s ordered, but they’re coming to spray foam on Monday, so if this one’s sealed and working I’m inclined to leave it unless the new drain is clearly going to be a way better fit. This is one of those – not being familiar with the stuff so it’s harder to work out what size to order things. At any rate, the rest of the plumbing’s fine, or at least appears so… so if I have to rectify this it shouldn’t be impossible.
We’ve also put up the pocket door frames, which is quite exciting. It means all the framing is truly completed. Apart from any fixes needed when we’re drywalling… And it adds that final sort of definition to the spaces. The door frames to both bathrooms and the laundry were massive voids because the pocket door frames were missing… now they’re in, and finally the rooms feel more room like.
So, we should be drywalling… only, you need the wood to be under 15% humidity…
Yeah, about that.
We’ve known for a while that it wasn’t going to be that easy. But now the insulation’s in, we’ve thrown some heating in, and (freakily) turned on the “whole house fan”, so hopefully the house’ll be dryer. Weirdly, you can have two studs that are nailed together along their entire run and one will be 8% RH and the next one will be 17% RH. Mostly though, the new stuff is around 8-10% and the older stuff is around 12-17%. The ceiling trusses are tend to be in the higher end too… which is a pain, because that’s where we wanted to start. Anyhow, we’ve got to clear some space – both to space to work and space to store the drywall when it arrives. So I’ve gone back to working on the cedar:
I’ve also been working on the bit of wood that hides the transformers for the hidden LED lights that lurk behind the cedar that will go around our front porch. Hopefully they (and it) will work.
On the drywall front, we’ve got a book, and we’ve ordered some funky things that apparently help deal with the drywall joints at angles on the cathedral ceilings (which apparently like to crack) and our clumsy framing at the top of the cathedral ceiling wall. Only now do I work out how we could have held the walls up and vertical while we faffed about to get something more accurately in-line than we did. Thankfully, you’re not meant to put screws in too near the top of the wall, so it may be that the worst of our bits of framing don’t actually matter.
And soon we’ll place the terrifyingly huge order for drywall. We also need to lay some of the heating pipework to feed the hot-water towel warmers – since they hang on the wall that pipe will need to go in before the drywall.
So there’s much progress, but it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be in by our vague and unspoken deadline. Sadly. There’s so much drywall to do… and this is our first ever attempt at drywall, so I don’t expect a lot of speed.
