So as most of you know, the Mrs. and I are expecting another baby girl! Cora Angela will be here late Feb. - early March 2015! Great news....... except we only had two dedicated bedrooms.
The way the Little Old Parsonage was originally updated, we had a master bedroom downstairs with a master bathroom. The other downstairs bedroom has its own bathroom, and then we have a half bath near the kitchen.
The upstairs was "finished" with a large bonus room, a loft area, and two closets. Luckily, a 3 inch drain pipe and water supply lines were run into the attic by the previous owners. This finished attic bonus room is going to be our other daughter's new big girl room. Just need to add a bathroom and a closet. Easy right?
Step 1. Take out the wall, plumb everything. (sorry didn't get many pictures during this phase)
The first thing I had to do was run the plumbing for the bathroom. My plumbing experience from working construction consisted of an old man named Pokey telling me "hot on the left, cold on the right, shit flows down stream". Simple enough I suppose.
As I mentioned before, the previous owners had the forethought to go ahead and run drain and supply lines to the attic. (thank God for that! They really did think of everything!) Behind the original bead board wall was the original coal heat chimney, and behind that was the plumbing. Overall I had about 4 feet between the wall and the existing plumbing to get 1 inch of fall (1/4' per foot according to modern construction code).
The first thing we did was mark about where we wanted everything to go. We used tape on the floor to give a rough estimate of where the tub, toilet, and sink were going to go. Looks about right, TAKE OUT THAT WALL!
Demolition is my specialty, whether I mean to destroy it or not, I'm good at it. I took the bead board off of the wall the length of where the bathroom would be. This opened up the attic so we could see what we were working with. We discovered there was a support beam running behind that wall, a big one, the kind of support beam you don't cut. Great, how are we going to run plumbing through that beam?
The answer was kind of tricky. I opted for an American Standard Yorkville model rear discharge, pressure assisted toilet. This way the big toilet drain pipe would go over the beam. It actually was really easy to set and slid right in to place. For the tub, I set it on 2x4's to lift it about 3 1/2" off of the floor, allowing for just a small notch in the support beam that would not compromise structural integrity. My father in-law helped me hook up the diverter valve, set the tub and tie everything together, It actually looked pretty good. The sink was easy, it was going on a back wall and we just had to round the corner and tie into the drain pipe. We ended up getting better than the 1/4" per foot of fall required and got more like 1/2", no sitting water! From there we ran supply lines with PEX pipe (hot on left, cold on the right) and turned the water on. NO LEAKS!
Sometimes its better to be lucky than talented. I like to think between my father in-law and myself, we have a pretty good combination of both.
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| American Standard, Yorkville Toilet |
After everything was set in, I pieced the usable parts of the wall back in place (good at demolition) and was ready to move on to the framing.
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| Looking at the Bathroom |
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| From the entrance of the room |
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| The bathroom |
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| Changing table when I picked it up |
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| Hole cut, sink set |
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| Sanding |
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| More sanding |
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| Sanded, painted and stained |
After completing the vanity, I was finally able to start in on framing the bathroom and closet. The Mrs. and I decided to use pocket doors that slid into the wall. The shape and set-up of the room just did not allow for swinging doors, just wasn't practical. I got them upstairs and was ready to set them in place when what do you know, the pocket doors were too tall for the room. I had to cut the top off about 3 inches to get them to stand up, and after some finagling I was able to get the bathroom framed on a Friday night. My dad came down on a Saturday to help me frame the closet. This was probably the easiest part of the whole project. The most difficult part of framing was the angle of the ceiling. This took some trial and error, and we were able to use some scraps to figure the angles on everything. After that Saturday, we were all framed in.
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| Bathroom Framing |
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| All Square and level |
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| Completed framing of closet and bathroom |
Step 3. Drywall and trim and electrical
The next step was setting the drywall. Luckily, there was not much that needed to be put. I think I bought 5 4'x8' sheets of drywall and was able to cut them and hand them in an evening. The good thing about drywall is the mud. Your original cuts don't have to be perfect because you are going to cover and gaps and holes with mud anyway. Needless to say, I was not overly concerned with lining the drywall up perfect, and I didn't, but it wasn't an awful job.
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| Drywall up |
One thing I opted to do instead of traditional drywall and corner bead is case the walls. By case I mean use wood to define the corners and edges. That is how houses were built back in the day and the way much of the downstairs is done in the house. Seeing as the house was built in 1906, I thought it only appropriate to use this method. I cased both corners, the top and the doors. Again the hard part was the angles on the ceiling but it turned out to be OK. This looked better than I thought and motivated me to make the trim and molding myself. I got the router out and started shaping. And Shaping. And Shaping, and creating the biggest pile of sawdust I have ever made Seriously, it was a big pile of sawdust and shavings. I then went and started hanging it. Hanging any type of molding is complicated, with angles and hiding your cuts etc. Add to that a changing slope wall and it becomes nightmarish. Needless to say I made lots of poor cuts and re-cuts but it all worked out in the end and it all looked good enough for me.
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| Trim and molding up and on the wall. |
Step 4. Tile...and an honest look at my framing
With the drywall up, it was time to get back in the bathroom and start finishing it so I could paint. Let me say I have never done Tile before, no experience at all, but how hard could it be? The Mrs. Cousin has done quite a bit of tiling, and insisted I use a water barrier membrane that helps protect the framing behind the cement board. At $50 a quart, it ain't cheap, but I wanted to do this the right way. I painted the membrane on the cement board and let it dry over night. My goal was to set the first row of base tiles, and let them dry so everything else could rest on top of them. The one thing about tile is it makes you take a good honest look at your framing skills and how square everything was. Nothing was setting right, like nothing. I took out the framing square and the level just to check and everything was square, except the original walls. Well OK, the house is over 100 years old and when it was built, it likely wasn't exactly square, so I just had to deal with it. The first night I got the base tiles in.
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| Base Tiles |
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| How bout' them apples |
I then went to get some paint. The Mrs wanted the bead board and trim painted white. Do you know how many shades of white there are? There is "Piano Key White" and "Elephant Tusk White" and "Antique White" and "Angelina Jolee's Teeth White" seriously, lots of white. I chose "White". Yep, plain old White not mixed or anything, just White.
I painted the bathroom first, as a test to see if it would roll on, and it did! I then painted all of the trim and wall casings. Three coats worth of brushing it on. Hey this is starting to look like a room!
Next I painted the bead board ceilings and walls with three coats of WHITE. Trick to painting beadboard, roll it on THICK!!! Then follow it up and run a foam brush through the natural cracks. It was starting to look pretty sharp!
Step 6. Closet for a Princess
The next thing I had to do was the closet. Up to this point it was pretty much an empty shell. I got some 1x12 pine boards and went to the shop. I had a basic vision in my head of what I wanted the closet to look like, but until the sawdust stops flying, and the glue has dried, you really don't know what will come out of my shop. I wanted some shelves for bulky clothes, some shelves for shoes (she is a girl after all), hanging racks for her clothes, and a taller hanging rack for dresses and things as she gets older. I built the first shelf and took it up and set it in place, looked pretty good. I then built the shoe rack. Now the shoe rack was going to have to fit between two walls, like a perfect fit. (This is where I thank the carpentry Gods and do a happy dance)
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| Shoe Rack |
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| Other shelf and a swiffer! |
Step 7. Pretty Pink
Yep that's right. The outside drywall is pink. Now I am not an interior designer by any means, I leave that nonsense to my better half. We waited to decide what color to paint the drywall until after she chose the bedding for the room. Guess what color was in the bead spread? Yep Pink. So I did the good husband/daddy deed of painting his princess' walls pink.
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| Pink walls |
The Project is almost done. Since there is another girl on the way, it doesn't make much sense to move all of the furniture upstairs. We needed a dresser, a headboard, a book shelf, some night stands and some toy storage.
The Mrs.' grandmother had an old (really old!) small dresser that she no longer had any use for. Another great piece that was solid wood. I was able to sand it down and stain it a dark brown color. The mirror needed some minor repair that I was able to do and sand it down and stain it as well. Overall it turned out very nice and although small, fits perfectly in the room
The Bathroom Mirror was another one of the family finds that I was able to just stain and touch-up. It fit perfectly over the vanity and really stands out among all the white in the Bathroom.
The little ones cousin has outgrown much of her "play" furniture from when she was a little girl, and naturally it made its way into our basement. One of the items was a small desk that was painted white. I sanded, and sanded and sanded until most of the white was whatever pressed board it was made of would take a stain. I put the same dark stain as everything else and let it sit. Because the material does not have any grain, I had to make some grain in it so that it would at least look like it was real wood. Easier said than done, especially because of all the small nooks and crannies and my complete lack of enthusiasm for sanding it. It turned out good enough but definitely won't be a piece that stays out of the fire pit forever, but for now it works.
The last piece is a bookshelf that my mother in-law found at an estate sale. When we got it it only had 1 shelf and was really more of a bench with tall back on it. I added two more shelves and re-painted it white. It fits perfectly in the corner and will be a great place for the little one to keep her favorite books and toys until she gets older.
The only things we have left to do are find and finish a headboard and some night stands. The little on is ready to move in to her "big girl room", and in the next week or two, she will!
Special thanks to everybody who passed along ideas and advice while doing this project. Special thanks to my Dad and my Father in-law who provided tons of support and physical labor.
There is still some decorating to do, but again, I will leave that to my better half and let her post the final pictures over on her blog at http://scottandbrookkincaid.blogspot.com/
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