Oh, what fun a bathroom remodel can be! Two unexpected hurdles
Well, it’s high time I posted an update about how our bathroom remodel is going. I’m sure if you asked my wife, she’d have expected it to be all over with about two weeks ago.
However, we encountered two unexpected surprises:
1) “Honey, what’s that dripping sound coming from the TV ?” — One Friday (was it two or three weeks ago?), Terry and I had been out all afternoon, shopping. Now, I had always said this bathroom remodel was MY project. I urged her to keep her nose out of it. This was in “fair retaliation” for the fact that she had been completely in-charge of our kitchen remodel a few years ago. But now, I had decided to involve her in… shopping for towels.
You’d have thought I told her we were going on a tour of the world’s chocloates! She was in heaven! We took our paint swatch and went to eight stores. Found a terrific selection of towels in the exact shade of our new wall color… at Marshall’s (of all places)!
Anyways, we got home at around 6 or 7 PM and each collapsed into our recliners. That’s when we heard the dripping.
Yep, there was a drip every 15 seconds…coming from the ceiling above the TV! When we looked up, there was a large wet spot.
Here are some photos we took that night:
We immediately found some pans to catch the drips and I phoned our contractors, Mike & Denise Butler aka Inviting Spaces.
Now, Mike had just finished putting down the cement backer board that effectively straightened out our subfloor. But back over he came and with a zip-zip from his drill, he pulled up the screws and pulled up the sections of cement board surrounding the drain and water supply lines for our tub.
And while, you could clearly see that the wood beneath the pipes was WET, there was no puddle to be seen and the pipes seemed to be dry!
Quite the mystery!
Mike and Denise admitted that one of them had accidentally stepped on / turned on one of the water supply lines while working earlier that day, but they quickly caught that and shut it off. The quantity of water released didn’t seem to explain the big “puddle mark” in our family room ceiling!
So, Mike left the floor torn-up for the weekend. We agreed that it sure seemed like no ACTIVE leaking was occurring. And the dripping had slowed. Mike and Denise left.
Terry and I tried to keep an eye on the wet spot all weekend. On Sunday, large chunks of plaster started to fall from the ceiling! And with each one that fell, dripping resumed for a few hours. That had me a bit paranoid about whether or not we were still having a leak somewhere!
But on Monday (Memorial day, I think), Denise woke up with a terrific theory in her brain! She wondered if downward pressure was being applied on one of the supply lines when they sealed it in… and if that pressure was somehow causing the leak.
So, back over they came and they tested the theory by pushing down a bit on the supply line they thought might be the culprit. Now, these lines run parallel to the subfloor and then, of course, make a 90-degree upward turn. The curving of those old copper pipes wasn’t exactly “smooth”. It looked more like a series of “dents” in the copper. Well, it turns out that at the connection directly ABOVE that 90-degree turn, water would slowly drip out, IF you pressed down slightly on the pipe. If you let go, the dripping stopped. And, when you pressed down, the pipe would then TOUCH the wood beneath it. So, instead of a puddle of water there, the water would slowly WICK into the ceiling beneath it!
Here are two photos… one of the ceiling after Mike did a little tear-out on Monday… and the other showing that copper pipe with the “bend” in it that caused the problem:
I honestly believe that Denise may have solved a years-old mystery! You see, when we bought the house, I observed that that area of our family room ceiling looked like it had been patched after some sort of leak.
And you have to take into account the fact that, up until this project, the clawfoot tub had been boxed-in, but its supply lines had inexplicably had a large opening around them. So, it would seem, that some previous owners may have encountered the exact same “mystery leak”… and just solved by leaving the floor immediately around those supply lines opened!
Still, the damage to our ceiling below remains. Mike’s gonna fix it. It’s not his fault, so I’m sure he’ll charge me something fair for his time and trouble.
And as far as the actual leak goes, Mike has replaced and shortened that length of curving copper pipe. The floor has been closed for well over a week now and no leaking has occurred.
Next came our second big hurdle…
2) “My kingdom for a pedestal !” — So, Mike and Denise had purchased a pedestal sink (from Lowe’s) that fit exactly what we wanted: I wanted something with a fluted column base, so as to reflect the fact that our front porch has similar columns. And yes, I wanted a pedestal sink! No more crappy cabinet-sink! My wife wanted a sink that had a lot of “edge surface area”…. you know, a place to put the soap, the shaving cream, etc.
However, when we finally located a plumber who would be willing to tackle our fixture installs (Tim Pernie of Blue Ridge Plumbing & Drain Service), he gave us some bad news: The pedestal for that sink wasn’t going to fit our situation.
Over the next several days, I worked with Mike and Denise and did some shopping of my own, both online and in-store. And I came to a conclusion: Most of the plumbing world assumes that, if you’re going to install a pedestal sink, your plumbing is coming out of the WALL immediately behind it, NOT THE FLOOR !
Our pedestal had two problems:
a) It had a 12-inch diameter round base. Because this diameter was so large, it’d run into / cut-off the two water supply lines coming up from the floor.
b) It had an opening in its back, but this opening started a good 8-inches off of the ground…and there was a sort of “lip” immediately before it. This meant that you couldn’t actually put it over the existing floor drain line.
Here are some photos where I’ve tried to show the problem:
Here’s a top-down view of the pedestal we chose, next to the plumbing that’s coming up through the floor. Note that you can’t see the supply lines in the photo because the pedestal and the drain are blocking our view of them:
At first, Mike & Denise thought they could possibly find another pedestal. So did I. I went to a plumbing supply place called Dorfman’s in Kansas City. They have a nice selection. I found a pedestal with an opened back that would probably work. But the sink itself was more modern-looking. And it was smaller. There was very little “edge space” to put one’s toiletries on while using it.
After a few more days of mulling it over, Mike asked me if he thought we should try to cut the back of the original pedestal that we had wanted to put in. That pedestal costs about $50-60. I thought about it: We’d already been agonizing for about a week about finding a pedestal that would work. Mike had a cement saw that he could try to use, but he admitted, he’d never tried this sort of thing on a sink before… and the entire pedestal could shatter on us!
I said, let’s give it a try. Mike had me come out and observe, just so we could think and talk through it. First, Mike cut a vertical line in the back of the pedestal, to relieve pressure. Then, he took a black marker and marked the angles on either side of that line that he wanted to slice. Basically, we were going to remove somewhere between 90 degrees and 120 degrees of the circle that made up the pedestal base.
Well, thirty minutes later, it was done! There were no unexpected problems with the outcome! The pedestal looks fine. And it will work. As I type this, our plumber has arrived and has started installing all of the fixtures. And he says that pedestal will work now.
So, it was a $60 gamble, but Mike did a sweet job! It came out just fine! I don’t have a photo of it at the moment but I will try to get one.
Terry’s looking forward to taking baths again in this upstairs bathroom! (She just doesn’t like the downstairs one as much, for some reason.)
Thanks for stopping by the site!
-= Dave =-
P.S. Note to self… or whomever may own this house in the future: If you ever get the opportunity, move the sink’s plumbing to INSIDE THE WALL! Wish we’d have thought to have done this BEFORE we’d laid the floor tile!