So yes, the small bath is essentially complete. But the road here was far from an easy stroll. Things that were left to do after all of the tile, trim and paintwork was some electrical (1 light switch and 1 GFCI), the plumbing, all of the fixtures and the medicine cabinet. It shouldn't be more than a day. Right?!
Late on a Saturday, I decide to take care of the electrical and follow up with the plumbing and other things the following Sunday. I spend about 30 minutes locating which circuit coordinates with the bathroom. Funny it is on the one that controls the living room, one plug in a 2nd floor bedroom and the light at the back door. Man, this house has some screwy things going on (but I already have an Electrician waiting in the wings to correct that craziness). Anyway, the light switch was cake. But the GFCI, which was replacing an old 2-prong outlet was not so kind. First off, when I pulled the outlet... 4 wires. Normally there are only 2 or 3 (with a ground). So this was rigged up in a series to some other "thing" in the house. Lovely. It took several tries until it was too dark to work. I was royally frustrated since I kept getting an open hot from the little tester. One set of wires was of a very heavy-gauge copper strand which made each attempt that much more difficult. The mounting screws for it didn't accommodate that gauge of wire very well. I left it. I get back to it on Sunday. I pull out the real tester and get to work. I figure out which set is hot and wire it up. Incidentally, it was the same as the first time I wired it up... but for some reason, it didn't quite resolve properly. The green light on the GFCI was lit. The test and reset buttons worked. 115V good to go. Still tested "open ground". I shrugged my shoulders and proceeded with shoving a GFCI outlet with 4 over-sized wires into an opening that barely fit the old outlet (almost half as deep). It took several tries with the large-gauge wires popping off several times to get it in... but I got it in. It isn't perfectly flush, but then again, nothing is in this house... 'cept the main foundation.
The following weekend, I start with the fixtures shortly after my run. I install the toilet. While tightening the bolts to the floor, I get a loud "pop" and the bolt I was tightening was really loose. D'oh! I eventually pull the toilet off the floor and I find that the replacement closet flange ripped itself right out of the mounting bolts holding it onto the floor. Ugh! I run all over the house to find a workable solution. I eventually find some counter-sunk finishing washers. I installed them and BAM! I was back in business. Well, sort of. I had to run to the local hardware box store to get a new wax seal. Scrape off the old, and now I was bolting the toilet down again. POP! Again?! I pull the toilet and the flange didn't pop, the bolt slipped out of the slot on the flange. A little readjustment and I bolted it down. I had a little doubt on the wax seal as I did not run to get another one. I finish installing the tank and all the innards.
I move on to the sink and pedestal. I leveled it out, marked the mounting holes and drilled for the cleats. I ran into something on one of the holes and was worried the mounting screw was too long. So... I cut one short. Mistake. I mounted the sink and the screw I cut off would not engage. So... off to the box 'ware store. I couldn't find the exact screw but found one very similar. I got home, and it worked fine. I quick put on the faucet and I moved onto the new supply valves.
I shut off all the water to the house and I start to install the new 1/4-turn valves for the toilet and the hot and cold water supplies for the sink. Off come the old valves and on with the new... on comes the water. Toilet, check. Hot supply line, check. Cold supply line, drip. Off goes the water. I redo the teflon tape and put it back on. Water on. Drip. I tighten the valve on more... more water. Off goes the water... I do this several times before I decide to really feel around. What I found was a near killer for the project. The back of the threaded portion of the iron pipe had corroded through; there was a clean cut on about half of the pipe. Very bad. I try to thread the valve on farther but it would not cover the break. I now had 2 choices. Either cut and re-thread the pipe or cut the all open and replace the entire supply line(s) with new copper.
That afternoon and evening, I visited several hardware store... all sizes. I was looking for a die that I could use to re-thread the pipe... on the wall. Most instructions I found had a pipe in a pipe vice and threading it with a giant wrench. Ho boy. The thread size was 3/8-18 pipe thread. Shouldn't be too hard to find... pretty common size... NOT! Every place we went, 1/2" pipe was all they had... if they even had any of the tools I needed. I was frustrated. And I went back on-line to find solace. On the web, I found only 2 places that carried pipe-threading dies... Sears and Harbor Freight. Sears tools were in the hundreds of dollars. HF was in the tens. So at about 9AM on Sunday, I was at the local HF. I picked up a set of dies with the 3/8" I needed. I got it home, opened the case and saw some GIANT tools. I grabbed my pipe cutter and some WD-40 and cut off the bad portion of the pipe. I then held the die up to the remaining pipe sticking out of the wall. The tool was not going to work. There was not enough pipe left to even give me hope that it would work. My heart sank. I put all the tools back into the case and made my way back to HF. It was 10AM.
When I got there, I returned the tool set. They had a set of just the dies for threading smaller pipes; 1/4", 3/8" and 1/2". I still needed to tool to hold the die, so I picked up a tool and die set just for the holder. I get home, open up the dies... perfect to do what I need. I crack open the kit... and the dies are tiny... and so are the holders. ARGH! Do I go in search of a holder that fits?! Not again. I sit and ponder for about 15 minutes staring at the 3/8" die. I get up and head for the garage to the bike tool box. Go HERE for the full story on this little ditty, entered Sunday 11-04 under the title, "Bike Tools to the Rescue".
They don't call me twirlyhead for nothing. This weekend, I had a mission to install my small bath and finish it up. All I needed to do was hook up all the plumbing and then address the medicine cabinet and viola! The king's throne is anew!! But a little snafu utilized my biking background into fixing my home. :D!
As I threaded on the new valve for the cold water, I noticed it was a little bit crooked. When I flipped on the water - drip, drip, drip. D'oh! So I tighten it, and it gets worse. I try it again but no dice. And again. I started to feel around an bit more and discover that the 97 year old iron pipe had given up. The back of the threads had split open at the thin spot. It was just getting worse the more I played with it. I came to the realization that I needed to go to the next step.
Choice: cut and rethread pipe or replace the old pipe with copper (which might entail a plumber). After a bit of pondering, I go out in search of an appropriate die set. I had already scanned the web for the pipe die I need... a 3/8" NPT pipe thread. Most kits I found for pipes started at 1/2" and went up. Home Depot... 1/2" dies. Menards... 1/2" dies and up. So I check the web and find only 2 places with 3/8"; Sears and Harbor Freight.
Sears... hundreds. HF... tens. After a rough night of sleep dreaming about sweating pipes and why iron pipe was a bit easier to deal with and ripping the wall open to replace it all and put in complete copper. I was at HF at 9AM this Sunday morning to pick up some dies. I picked up a large set and brought it home. The kit weighed a ton, but if it is what I needed to get the job done, that that was OK. Well, not really. Those things were HUGE. It was like a 3" ratchet with 50mm bits. I laid it aside for the time being and crossed the line of no return; I cut the pipe. I then held the die up to the pipe... and it was so big, I couldn't even get it onto the pipe to thread it. I made the wrong decision on the die kit. I needed a smaller set. Soooo... back to HF for a return. I instead picked up a much smaller tap and die set as well as a complete SAE/metric tan and die set. My assumption was that the handle in the kit could be used with the dies in the separate kit. No dice. The pipe thread dies were too big for what was included in the complete set. So now I had to improvise. I was tired of running around.
I came up with something to do the job. It entailed one of my, now not so used, Park bike tools. The HCW-5 Crank and Bottom Bracket wrench.The die has an alignment slot and two dimples on the outside of the body. So I started the first threads by hand to get a good alignment and then used the HCW-5 to hook the die and I spun it to start cutting the threads... similar to what the tool was suppose to do.
I didn't get a pic while working on the project but it worked great! Sink is all good to go! All I have to comment about is that is got harder and harder to keep pushing the thread. I'm glad it is done.
In the middle of all that I did have to uninstall the sink, faucet and pedestal... and reinstall it all at the end. Fun. Onto the drain! I picked up a kit during one of my many trips to the box hardware store for the drain. White PVC with a trap and all that. I hold it up to the stem from the sink. Wrong side... too big. So another trip to get the right size. I begin to install. Behind a pedestal trying to go to the drain pipe in the floor is not fun. There was so much going on behind the pedestal without much room at all. I ended up having to get a "bendy" pipe to match up the pipes as well as reuse the rubber coupler to go from the white PVC to the metal pipe coming from the floor. That took the rest of the Sunday afternoon to finally tie up all the plumbing issues, but it was essentially done.
Late Sunday, I started to scheme on how to mount the medicine cabinet. The one we chose several months ago was heavy. Plus it was meant to be mounted into a hole in the wall, not surface mounted, like we wanted. I thought that attaching a ledge on the wall the bottom of the cabinet could rest on that with another "cleat" holding the top and a couple of screws through the back. The plan was on Monday to make the needed brackets. I worked through lunch and forgot to bring the aluminum L-channel back from the office. I was then "pushed" to work on the installation anyway. I got ticked, but went on with it. I pulled more L-channel from the garage and fabricated two brackets. I installed the lower bracket with 5 screws cleated to the wall. Solid. I ran through putting together the upper cleat in my head and realized it would not work the way I thought. So I stared at the cabinet for a while. Eventually, I put 4 holes into the back of the cabinet. I held the cabinet up against the wall and marked the location of each hole on the wall. Put the cabinet down, drilled the holes bigger for the cleats, inserted the cleats and crossed my fingers. I brought the cabinet into position and drove in the first screw. I hit the cleat! I proceeded and I hit all 4 cleats. I secured the cabinet to the L-channel as an added safety precaution. I checked level... and it was. I picked up all my tools and put them all away. It was after 10:30 at night and I did not have any dinner.
Tuesday I put in the TP dispenser and the towel rack.
I christened it the following Wednesday.
