Damn roof!!!

Well after 5 weeks of working on the roof, I am throwing in the towel. It has been wearing me out, and now I understand why roofs are replaced in teams of 6-8. I did the tear off almost by myself, and hired a guy to help me move the 7000lbs of old shingles to a dumpster. After my co-worker Robert and my Brother helped me lay the new decking and get ready for the tar paper I was spent. But I still had to replace the facia boards, rehang the gussets, lay tar paper, and get the shingles to the top of the roof. Sounds simple. Robert came down from seattle, and helped me get the 8 rolls of tar paper installed. I got about 80% of the singles installed on one side, and after the hot sun made me slip and rip some of the granules off of some shingles, I gave up. I couldnt get any pictures during the process, but will capture some of the aftermath.
I hired a professional roofer to finish the job for me. I am a little disappointed in myself, but it is going to storm this weekend, and I am so damn tired. 70lbs doesnt sound like that much until you are on a roof, in the sun slipping on your own sweat.

Here are some pictures of the water hammer stopper or air chambers I had to install from the backside. Not terribly fascinating but the soldering in a tight spot was fun. Especially with the wire in the way. Soldering is kind of fun, here are the materials and steps should you take on this type of project.
Materials:
propane torch ( plus striker if you get the manual version)
Lead free solder
Flux (I bought a kit and got Water Flow 2000)
Emery cloth or some scouring device
Pipe cutter

Steps:
Cute pipe. Duh.
Clean the end of the pipe, and the inside of the connector with the emery cloth.
Coat both the inside of the connector and the pipe in flux
Join the two parts, and give a twist to get that flux all over
Heat the joint, by applying heat mostly at the thickest part.
the flux with flow, and turn from clear to white and back to clear. When it is clear then touch the joint with the solder. The solder should flow by now, but if not, keep heating until it does. When it does flow, it is like water and will drip so be warned. The solder should get sucked into the joint.
Easy.


Also I finished tiling the bathroom floor, but not the walls. This picture shows the mortar still drying, before I cleaned it all off. I cant get to the tile store during their stupid hours (8:00-4:30 m-f) so I have to wait until I can take a long lunch AND have a car. May be a while. Anyway, the floor was another Shit! when I started to mortar over the heated flooring element. A few things.....First, no matter what the instructions say, DO NOT mortar and lay tile at the same time. First mortar over the element or pour some self leveling cement to get the mat, and element to stay out of the way. The Trowel kept getting caught on the orange mesh carrier.



I cut into the cement board to bury the thermostat, and the power wire. This should have clued me in to 'First' and 'Third'
Second see 'First'.
Third, mosaic tiles are small tiles that come on a sheet like what I used. When the instructions say " When using mosiac tile" understand what that means. notice above how the blue element runs under the edges of the hex tile. Those edges will be pushed up a little but, and not sit flat, which will end up creating a somewhat lumpy floor. I should have used a self leveling cement first.
I used this grout, and added lots of this bonding agent to help it stick. I also added this to the mortar. A customer in the tiling aisle of homedepot recommended this combo to me. It seemed to be a lot stronger when I had to scrape it out between every freakin space where the mortar came through too much.

Shit!

So after walling up the previously displayed sink drain and supply lines I remembered that they need air chambers to stop the knocking that happens when the water gets shut off. So....Shit. I had to cut a hole in the wall from the closet in the adjacent room to cut the pipes and solder (although I am using lead free, and it melts at a really low temp so is it soldering?) on some air chambers. I will have to post pictures later.

Ok, so here we have the new hot and cold water pipes, the waste pipe, the thermostat for the heated floor, and the box for the GFCI to connect the heated toilet seat to. I am running 3/4 copper to the bathroom, and will lookinto running a larger diameter pipe from the street and have it split into 3/4 at the junction for the kitchen and bathroom.

When I cut away the old steal pipe for the cold water the black fluid shown below dripped out. I guess it was water once.
After it all got run and mounted (the copper stops just below the floor to be finished later) I used 5/8 plywood to make the wall flush all the way down to the floor in preperation for the cement board. 5/8 is just a bit shy of the thickness of the lathe and plaster. The gap will be filled with mortar.
Originally I used a "new construction" junction box, but it didnt sit right, and since I am not entirely sure how far it needed to protrude from the plywood I replaced it with a single gang version of the one pictured below. It is quite a bit more expensive, but it has 1 1/2 inches of depth adjustment using a screw. It is pretty awesome., I used another for the box for the heated towel rack. The double gang is 4.30 at homedepot.

Progress?

So I have been spending a boat load of time working on the bathroom, but feel like it is still miles away from completion. Here is the last two weeks or so:

Got the walls off a little more, and had to sister the studs under the window. The studs were also cut into to allow for plumbing. You can see the old pipes still in the wall (the big 2" one, and one behind the lathe in the little hole). These pipes are no longer used, and it took some work to get them free. A 24"chain pipe wrench along with a giant regular pipe wrench to get it all free. It ran up to the roof where it vented, but none of it was connected to the stack, so I took it all out.

After we got the pipes out we had to reinforce the studs. You can see where the short studs are cut into again to allow for the waste water pipes, and how I suspended the vent pipe so I can remove it later. I hope I can remove it later.

Here is the room from the door. You can see the part of the subfloor I replaced. The white bucket is covering up the toilet flange so the neighborhood fumes dont fill up my house.
Here is a close up of the replaced subfloor surrounding the toilet flange, and going under the wall into the closet in the next room. Its not very pretty and ideally it would be one solid piece, but since the subfloor ship-lap was 80% removed for plumbing I had to get something in under the bottom plate which meant cutting a smaller piece that would slide in. And by slide, I mean get the shit pounded out of it.
A little better view of the replaced floor. You can see into the next room beyond the stack. Thanks Robert for soldering up the new copper for the toilet.
Looking up from the basement. I added the diagonal support because the one that was there originally was cut in half to make room for the stack. The diagonal piece is just a 2x4 with two 2x4 braces unerneath. All the pieces were toenailed in. (Cheap-o Harbor Freight nail gun, has worked well so far, but dang it is loud. ) I hope this is enough, or a good idea. Since there was nothing there before, I have a hard time believing it will ruin anything.
This is from the closet in the next room. This part of the floor was not rotted, but it was the end of the rotten piece from under the toilet. Had to remove the whole board because what was left after cutting out the bad parts was only a triangle, and barely there.

So I started the house repairs/remodel in the bathroom which was remodeled last in maybe the 1950's. Very classy seafoam colored sink and tub. The toilet must have been replaced at some point. Here are pictures of the very gross, very used bathroom before I ripped everything out.


Also at some point the floor was replaced, or rather covered up. the original fir tongue and groove floor with the linoleum glue was covered with particle board, and everything set back down on top of it. Sounds great except if particle board gets wet, it falls apart.
The wax seal under the toilet had a leak, and the particle board got wet. This caused it to get soft and the toilet no longer had a solid floor to sit on. The toilet could move, and little bits of waste would seep through making the particle board even softer and weaker. This ended up rotting parts of the subfloor which I replaced with some...a ton of help. Thanks Robert!




While we were replacing the sub-floor it turns out the joists had been cut away back in the day to accommodate the new fangled plumbing. Here is what it looks like after we sistered a new 2x8 to the existing joist. You can see the end where it was cut for what looked like the waste water pipe from a sink. Above is the new subfloor of 3/4" 4ply plywood pounded in under the bottom plate.







This part of the room was not too bad, but if you are replacing the subfloor and you dont like the sink and counter......smash it out. This was the fun part, there was no toilet waste impregnated wood dust flying at me.

My new house is a little beat up, but in a fun way. It gives me the chance to watch my time and money disappear faster than ever before. I am very excited.
I will post photos of the work as it happens. So far, just demo on the bathroom, and some drywall work.