Shed Finished

After recently painting and staining the shed, my 5x14 foot shed is officially complete!  I built the doors from scratch, put in a reclaimed window on the south side, and included a 2-foot overhang on the north side for wood storage.

The shed sits in the corner of our lot, so I envision the fence lines eventually tying in to the edges of the shed.

The north side also includes a small ladder door so I can slide a 24' extension ladder in and hang it on the back wall.  The shed is topped with a corrugated, galvanized metal roof.  It is built from about 70 percent recycled material, which largely contributed to keeping the total cost down to $961.

I had a blast building it from the foundation to the roof.  I love the way it turned out, especially considering that this was my first piece of new construction.  Now I don't have to carry the lawnmower up and down the stairs into the basement each time I mow the lawn!

Westward Ho!

As I eluded to in my previous post, Ava and I will be moving to Truckee, California in about a month.  I received an engineering job offer that was too good to pass up.  I'll start working on June 20 as a geotechnical engineer for Holdrege and Kull in their Truckee office.  H&K have a few offices, with the main one being about an hour away in Nevada City, CA.

The Truckee office is small, with about five to ten people depending on the season.  The people I met there while interviewing a couple of weeks ago all seem to have a great perspective on the elusive work-life balance that matches my own.

I find that I'm filled with equal parts excitement to move and resume my engineering career, and sadness for leaving Missoula.  It'll be great to be closer to Ava's family and I'll keep my fingers crossed that this works out and I'll finally get to settle in a place long enough to become a legitimate part of the community.

Bathroom Finished

Despite my lack of recent posts, I've been quite busy.  Between working 40 hours per week as a carpenter and putting in up to 30 more working on my own house, finding time to take pictures and write blog posts has been difficult.  Without further ado, here's the best before and after picture comparisons.

Before

After

Of course, that's just one side.  The shower took the most work.

Before

After

 And a little paint and pallet wood accent wall really spiffed up the toilet alcove.

Before

 

After

The major pieces of this project were re-plumbing everything, redoing all the lighting, installing cabinets, tiling the floor, refinishing the tub, tiling the tub surround, and building the accent wall.  If it wasn't for a handful of termites discovered in some of the pallet boards and the mank discovered in the wall behind the shower, everything would have gone real smoothly.  As it was, I had to rebuild both mirrors and part of the pallet wall.  I also used pallet boards as base molding.  Other than having an electrician help out with some of the wiring and the countertop supplier install the countertop, I did everything else.  The total cost of the bathroom remodel was $6,815, which includes all new appliances, and fixtures.

So, we've got a beautiful new bathroom, finished just in time to move to California and rent our house out (more on that in the next post).

Bathroom Remodel - Phase Next

After installing the cabinets, countertop, and sinks, the next committing move was to tear out the old, plastic tub surround and redo the shower area.  This turned into a multi-phase project that was more work than anticipated.

The old shower, complete with pink bathtub and leaky, plastic surround

After removing the surround, I discovered two layers of wet, moldy drywall with complementary smell.

With the drywall removed and mold damage assessed, I decided to plane down the studs that appeared affected by mold and mildew.  This brought clean, fresh wood to the surface, convincing me the mold issue was surficial as far as the wall studs were concerned.  As an additional precaution, I hosed down the studs, twice, with mold and mildew killer/preventer.

With that unexpected issue dealt with, I began some framing modifications to accommodate a built-in niche for the new tub surround.

Framed out niche for 

 Prior to rebuilding the surround, I planned to turn the hideous, pink tub white.  Using a $95 refinishing kit from Bath Works, I made this happen.

White tub!

Next task, plumbing.  I installed a new valve, tub spout, and shower head and connected it all up with PEX.  The instructions said to use copper pipe between the valve and tub spout, but the "expert" I spoke with at Home Depot said PEX would be just fine (and I desperately wanted to avoid soldering).  So, I went with 1/2" PEX all around (more on this later).

Plumbing complete (sort of)

 With blocking in at all planned board edges and transitions, and the wall framing planed as flat as I could get it, I was ready to start rebuilding the surround.

 Rebuilding the surround would consist of installing 1/2" backer board up to about the level of the shower head and waterproofing the backer board layer prior to tiling.

Backer board installed

 I had originally attempted to leave the existing drywall above the back board in place.  This turned out to be noticeably thicker than the 1/2" backer board, so it had to come out as well.

Upper drywall removed and replaced

 Next, the waterproofing.  I taped all joints with 6" fiberglass tape and covered all backboard surfaces with Hydro Barrier waterproofing membrane.

Pretty, blue membrane

Once the membrane dried, I installed the fixtures in order to temporarily use the shower while we wait for our ordered tile to arrive.  In doing this I discovered that water would come out both the shower and bath outlets when it was only supposed to be coming out of the bath outlet.  Further research into this issue led me to the conclusion that it was because I didn't use copper pipe between the valve and the bath spout.  While there is nothing magical about the material itself, 1/2" copper pipe has a larger inside diameter than 1/2" PEX.  The reduced flow through the smaller diameter PEX causes a pressure build up that ultimately raises the column of water between the valve and the shower head high enough to allow water through the shower head.  My planned solution, waiting to be implemented and tested while I wait for a couple of PEX parts to show up, is to increase the PEX diameter from 1/2" to 3/4" between the valve and bath outlet.  With the back of the wall still completely open, this should be a relatively simple and non-invasive fix while still avoiding and need to solder copper pipe.

The entire process described in this post took me one week.  I worked mostly evenings as I've been working full work weeks as a carpenter with Confluence Construction for the last five weeks.  As my hair is still long and I'm now working as a carpenter, the low-hanging-fruit of a joke is that I look like a modern-day Jesus.

Provided this plumbing fix works, the main tings left to finish the bathroom are to tile the surround, tile the floor, finish up some drywall installation, texturing, and painting, and some minor trim work.