DIY Woodworking, Home Improvement, and Art Projects

It has been awhile since I have been able to put any amount of time to working on our projects. This past weekend though, I was able to work on the master bathroom renovation on Saturday. We also did some shopping and got a nice vanity light fixture from our local light store (Lights for Less in Brunswick, Ohio if you’re interested – they are awesome!), a storage rack that goes behind and over the toilet, and a European-style towel rack that we’ll install on the wall later.

So the plumbing is fully hooked up now: The toilet is in place and working and the vanity faucet is working. The pipes below the sink though took some adjustments before they stopped leaking. The main thing I found was that it’s best to use plastic piping for the drain trap and extension tubes. I am told it lasts longer, doesn’t rust like brass, and it is very lightweight and easy to cut. You do need to use teflon tape or putty on all of the connections though. This was one thing I didn’t do the first time. There were a couple of connections that I didn’t tape up, and water leaked down through the threads where ends screwed together.

I also got a final coat of tinted glaze on the walls and it really helped to tone down the cinnamon/rust colored glaze that I used before. All in all I put two coats of primer, two coats of Ralph Lauren sand texture paint, one coat of a creamy, off-white color paint, two coats of cinnamon-colored transparent glaze, and two coats of celery-colored transparent glaze, for a total of nine layers! That took awhile, but the effect is sweet! It looks an worn, lime-washed plaster wall in a centuries-old Flemish or Tuscan village. It was definitely worth the effort, and the way it looks with the slate floor and the cinnamon-colored vanity is really cool.

The only thing we have yet to find is a mirror. I don’t know why, but it’s difficult to find just the right style, and just the right size, for this bathroom. Other than that, we just need to install the light fixture, prime and paint the ceiling white again, install the baseboard molding, and install a mirror. Just gotta keep on movin’!

Cheers!

Turns out, I didn’t know the best way to replace my toilet after I had finished the tile. I didn’t tile close enough around the gasket set into the floor. I also put both sets of washers for the bolts that attach the toilet to the gasket, underneath the toilet, instead of one set below, and one set above. I also didn’t put the wax ring in properly, and it would have leaked had we fully re-connected the water supply and filled the basin again.

So here are a few tips when getting ready to reinstall a toilet:

• Make sure as you’re laying out your floor–if you’re using tile–so that you get as close as possible to the gasket. Basically tile within an inch of it if you can, by making pieces that are triangular or otherwise, so that you get a close fit. If you don’t you’ll have untiled surface poking out from under the porcelain base of the toilet.
• Fully remove the old wax ring before you place the new ring down. It’s easy to overlook this step, but if you don’t do it, you won’t get a solid connection between the toilet and the gasket and you’ll have leaks, and you don’t want those kinds of leaks, trust me.
• When putting in the bolts that come with the wax ring kit, make sure that you only put the plastic guide washers in underneath. Then use the metal washers after you replace the toilet. This way the nut will squeeze the washer down and create a solid hold on the toilet, preventing it from shifting later on. So do it in this order – bolts, plastic washers, toilet, metal washers, nut, plastic caps to conceal the hardware.
• Those bolts, especially if they’re brass, can have very sharp threads.  I found this out the hard way, and now have a series of cuts that match up perfectly with the width of the bolt, and they are deep.  So please be careful when handling these bolts, and consider wearing gloves–even the thin plastic gloves may help protect your hands.

I am sure that there are other things to watch out for when putting your toilet back in, but these are things that I have personally done wrong and need to warn you about. I will post pictures of the wrong way to do it, and then pictures of the right way to do it once we add the required tile pieces, and fix the other stuff.

Hi Folks. I just opened a Flickr account the other day and I finally uploaded the first set of photos. It’s the set that we took while removing the toilet in the master bathroom. It was one of the first steps we did in preparing for the bathroom remodel. Basically we took the toilet out and moved it to the other side of the room, then we took out the vanity, the shower, and surrounding drywall. Then while we worked on the other areas of the bathroom, and framed and drywalled the new wall, we had set the toilet on the floor where the shower used to be.

Anyway, here’s the link to the How to Remove a Toilet set of photos. Go check ‘em out. I have been working on my long-overdue tutorials, and this is a taste of what the photos will look like for all of those projects. Thanks!

We got some more things done in the bathroom this afternoon. The first, and biggest, thing that we did was secure the vanity in place with shims, screws, and the top with construction adhesive. It was difficult trying to shim the vanity level because neither the back or side walls were plumb. This meant that I had to place shims in different places while trying to hold the vanity up, checking for level, and also checking to see how flush I could get it to both the back and side.

After some wrangling I got it fairly close, but it’s not perfect. To tell you the truth I am not really crazy about it. I guess you can always expect there to be some uneven walls and weird angles no matter how old the house is. Although in this house I think anybody would be in trouble because of the lack of any 90 degree angles. Oh well.

Once that was screwed in place to the back wall, we added a thin bead of construction adhesive around the top of the vanity. I tried to place it on the inside edge of the wood so that when the granite top pushed down, it wouldn’t squish out the excess all over the nicely finished wood. We did have a tiny bit of overrun, but it wasn’t too bad and we just wiped it off with an old towel. Before long that was dry and we went on to the next few rows of tile. Basically we laid down the adhesive, made the crossing pattern with the notched trowel, threw down the first set of spacers, and put in the tiles.

We actually picked out a good mix of colors and textures ahead of time to save us the trouble once we had the wet adhesive on the floor. Since we’re using slate tile there’s more to think about when laying out the pattern because they are anything but consistent. After about sixteen or so we came to the spot where we couldn’t put any additional full tiles in place.

We’re going to wait until next weekend probably to rent a wet saw and do all of the cuts in one day and finish the initial tile installation. Then after a few days we’ll wipe down all of the tile with a sponge and warm water to clean them. Next it will be a few coats of floor-grade tile sealer–although I am not sure which brand yet–and then we’ll do the grout. After another day or two we may add one final coat of sealer.

That’s it for now. It’s just nice to see a major element like the floor going into place. Take care and have a great week!