Robot Claw

We had our bathroom remodeled! We first decided to do this about five years ago and the pandemic had other plans but earlier this year we got a quote and signed on the bottom line. Since I had to be home for the duration we delayed the start until early July. All the work was done by a single guy, who is a carpenter, plumber and electrician (and can do concrete and carpet as well) and continually impressed me with his skills.

Since we only have one bathroom this also meant we had to find a place to shower, and our local YMCA turned out to be a fine solution. We became members, and for the two week duration of the job we drove every morning at 5:30 am (7 on weekends) and showered 🙂

First a couple of shots of the old bathroom, which was about 57 years old. We had painted it when we moved in, but had done nothing with the fixtures which definitely showed their age. The driving force behind the renovation was to remove the tub and replace with a walk-in shower.

He started with demolition, and the first step was removing the vanity and cabinet. This revealed ancient wallpaper we’d never seen before, as well as concrete under the tiles.

After removing the toilet (which we weren’t replacing since it’s fairly new) came the shower room walls, including the tiled shower walls. To minimize the work he tried to keep everything in large chunks, which were quite heavy. He was carrying these down the steps for a couple of days!

There’s the shower room with the walls mostly gone.

And here’s a shot after he’d removed the trim and door frame and removed most of the drywall. You can see the tub, old tiled floor and one old wall remains.

Then it was time to begin removing the tiles. This was an extremely noisy part of the job, and the jackhammer caused the entire house to vibrate! Under the tiles was an inch of concrete, which rested on a layer of plastic protecting the wooden floor underneath.

The tiles and concrete are gone, and it was time to remove the tub. We’re getting toward the end of the second day now (he worked 8 hours each day).

The tub was cast iron and he estimated it weighed over 200 kg. He broke it cleanly into 4 pieces and hefted them down one by one. I tried to lift one of these and couldn’t do it for more than a few moments!

I didn’t take any photos, but the next step was to remove the old wood in the shower room to access the plumbing under the floor. He had to remove and replace a lot of pipes, as well as change the location of the shower drain. This was the third day, and it took him most of the day to do the plumbing.

When he finished the plumbing he replaced some of the old wood and then laid a new second floor over it (so the new floor would be the same height as the old tiles). The new floor you see in the above photo was brought up in three massive pieces which he manipulated into place like Tetris! His attention to detail and precision was remarkable, and everything fit perfectly.

Incidentally I was downstairs during the entire job. I bought a second TV and set up my TG-16 mini and spent time playing games and watching YouTube. I did this because we put a gate up to keep Zoffy downstairs and I knew she’d be scared and upset and figured my presence would calm her (it did).

With demolition complete it was time to begin new installation, and the very first step was the new shower base. This was one of two steps he needed help with since it was so heavy (about 150 kg) and his boss stopped by to assist with carrying it upstairs. You can see it in place in the above pic.

He did some electrical next (adding an outlet and a few switches and moving some things around) before moving on to putting up new drywall. Like the floor he did this in massive pieces that fit perfectly when he installed them.

I had read builders often deliberately left things (usually bottles or cans) in walls. Nothing was found in ours – in fact the cavities were surprisingly clean – so before he put the last piece of drywall up I put this tiny ‘yowie’ toy inside. I wonder if it will be another 57 years before someone finds him? I also asked Greg (the guy who did the work) to sign the back of one of the drywall pieces and he was happy to 🙂

The new walls shortly after he had finished putting them up. This was the end of the fifth day.

And the above is toward the end of the sixth day. I never would have guessed that getting the drywall paint-ready would be the longest step, but all the plastering and sanding and smoothing took him 8 hours!

Since we hadn’t included painting in the quote the next step – painting the walls – was our responsibility, and we began as soon as he ended work on the sixth day, which was 8 days before he began (the job spanned two weekends).

Painting was difficult since weren’t very experienced. In total we did one coat of primer and two coats each of ceiling and wall paint. We painted before the floor was laid or fixtures installed to make the job easier.

It took hours! I started the first coat of primer around 5 pm, and – with Jessica’s invaluable assistance – we didn’t finish the last coat until 2 am! But we got it done and it looked great, as even Greg agreed when he came in the next morning to continue.

Kristin chose a light lavender for the walls, which looks wonderful and nicely compliments the mostly white of the fixtures and floor.

Next came the large shower wall. This was another 150+ kg piece and the only other time he needed help. Once again his boss came and they struggled getting it up in one piece! Even then he had to trim it since it was impossible to fit it through the bathroom door!

During the second week I spend many hours over several days reorganizing our DVD collection, as well as breaking down 6 LEGO sets I will be sending to Bernard. We’ve got hundreds of DVDs – the shelves ate two-deep – and I found many titles I will rewatch one day. By this time Zoffy had gotten used to ‘living downstairs’ half of every day and often came out (from under the blanket she hid under) to sit with me or see what I was doing.

With the shower walls in place it was time to install the new floor, and we chose marble texture vinyl plank tiles. These are popular in bathrooms now, and easier and cheaper than tile to install.

Around this point I once again found myself painting. This is the new trim, and I ended up painting 17 lengths of this! It was much easier than the walls, but still took me a few hours.

Here’s the new vanity, which is the same size as our old one but has much more storage space, a much better (single piece) sink and of course looks better.

And here’s the shower doors and toilet in place. This was on the second last day, and later that afternoon he hung the medicine cabinet and new light. Only trim, caulking and a few wall repairs (to fix a few dings made during shower installation) remained.

And then, after ten days of work, it was done!

A shot of the finished room!

And the new shower.

It’s not 100% finished, since we still need to touch-up the trim and skirting to cover the nails, but I’ll do that this weekend. We’ve also ordered some flat-packed small cabinets for additional storage, which we’ll put in during the next week.

Needless to say we’re very happy with the finished product. Not only does it look great, it’s good to have updated fixtures and to not have to step into a tub every time we need to shower! Yes it was fabulously expensive, but the work was done by a master and he’s built us a new room that should hopefully last for as long as we remain in this home 🙂

Our garage doors were in a terrible state.

The exterior handle dates them from a time before automatic door openers. The garage door guy told me they were at least 40 years old.

Look how dirty and wretched they were! The panels are actually made of wood (and glass): something else that dated them. They were extremely heavy, and when we lost power and had to open them manually it was a real chore.

Decades of snow and rain had started the wood rotting, and in parts gaps had formed. It was long past time to replace them! Today was the day.

The garage door guy turned up right on time at 8 am, and half an hour later he and his assistant had removed all the old hardware. Doors, springs, rails and weather seal: all gone. The noise was ungodly, but it was impressive how fast they worked given both were older than me.

Installing the new doors took much longer, and as you can see they came with shiny new rails. Only the motors remained from the old installation, although he opened and repaired the gears in one of them.

Interestingly the spring for the new doors is compact and installed above, which both takes much less space and is much safer. The doors are also quieter than the old ones.

And here they are. They’re metal, insulated and have sturdy plastic windows. They look great and I expect will outlive us. And no exterior handles 🙂

A couple of months ago we had a bit of water in our crawlspace downstairs which led to the discovery of roots growing into the pipe connecting the house to the main sewer line. Our options were to pay to have the pipe cleaned out every year or so, or get it replaced. Either way was an expensive proposition, so we chose the latter. Yesterday the work was done.

It was a fascinating procedure, since they only had a guess (within 3 feet) as to where the pipe exactly was under the ground, and the rise in our front yard meant they’d have to dig to a depth of at least five foot. The guy operating the excavator was a professional, and he was very careful and precise since he wanted to minimize damage to the front yard. almost immediately the scoop was breaking theough tangles of roots, and sometimes they were so thick his helper had to cut them with a chainsaw!

It took about 2.5 hours to reveal the pipe, and as you can see they had to shift the dig location a bit from their original guess. While this was happening there was another guy inside installing a new toilet and faucet in our downstairs bathroom, and he told me that on a previous dig they had unearthed (about 6 foot underground) a suitcase full of old style dolls, and that another employee had once found a box of cash (that the homeowner had let him keep)!

Here’s where the root had grown into the old pipe. It had created a dense root mass about 8 foot long and the guys were amazed we hadn’t had a serious blockage before!

The affected section was removed (the red circles show where it was cut out) and a new plastic one put in. They also added a clean-out access valve (apparently it’s required by code now) to make it easier to remove any future blockages.

The hole was then filled in and the work was almost complete. I say almost since the ground will settle so they’ll return after the thaw to add a load of dirt on top. Here’s what it looks like today, with the cleanout cap circled:

As I said this was very expensive, but we trust they did a good job and hopefully this will minimize problems in the future (plus we have a new loo and faucet downstairs). Stuff like this is just one of the many ‘joys’ of owning a home!