Bathroom Base Tiles

I continued my slow remodel of my bathroom by installing base tiles. Like many of the walls in my house, the walls in my bathroom were also in poor shape. I had some fun times with plaster as you can see around the venting. I had installed some of the tiles earlier, but couldn't get to the space behind my vanity without unhooking the water and moving it away from the wall. I've been trying to check items off my to-do list so I took a weekend to complete the project by doing wall repair, adding tiles, framing out the duct vent, adding a vent cover, grouting tiles, and caulking.

When I turned off the water and unhooked the hoses, there was still a slight drip. I had to come up with some innovative ways to contain the water while still giving me access to the wall behind them. I used rubber bands, bags, and buckets (see picture below). I was able to install the tiles in a day and used the next day to grout and caulk the tiles. Even though they will be mostly hidden by the vanity, they still look really good.

My phone camera is not great

SHARK BITE! The DIY, affordable way to fix copper pipes.

Apparently I'm not the only one who drills into water pipes! Thanks to a blog reader/friend, I've learned of how to fix holes in copper pipes the easy way... no soldering necessary. I'm still glad I saw what the plumber did because I would have made much more of a mess and probably would have been second-guessing myself the whole time. Here's what to do.
For humility's sake, let's put up an image of the pipe again. Yep... hole right in the middle. I did that.

If this happens to you, here is what to do...
1) Sprint to turn off the water main! (hopefully you are reading this BEFORE drilling into a pipe because if you are googling "how to fix a copper pipe" and your water main is still on, then you are going to need professional help).
2) Clean up the mess and put a towel under the pipe where the hole is.
3) Drain your system by turning on your hot and cold water faucets in the bathrooms especially in the lowest level of your house.
4) Get a pipe cutter, deburr/depth gauge tool, and shark bite push-fit coupling from your local hardware store.
5) Cut the pipe on either side of the hole no more than 2 inches long. Be patient with cutting the pipe. It may take a while.
6) This short video shows you the rest of the steps. And dude had an accent so that's extra reason to watch.

I hope this saves someone $200+ in their next plumbing emergency!

Dumb Dumb Dumb (aka Uncharacteristic Carelessness)

Biggest home repair fail yet...

Context first - I have been meaning to repair this poor drywall installation/missing drywall in my spare room for a while. I decided to take a stab at it this weekend while the room was vacated. The primary motivation is to make sure there is drywall along the bottom of the wall so I can install baseboards. [I've already installed baseboards in my room, but will have to blog about that later.]

A section of drywall had been replaced by a previous owner, but it was cracking between the pieces because he/she didn't use drywall tape (see picture above). I cut out the piece of drywall between the poorly-installed one and the access panel to the bathtub plumbing so I could replace the whole section with one piece.

The continuous piece includes a section below the tub pipes so I can install a single piece of baseboard along that wall. I'm planning to replace the plywood access panel with a drywall access

 

While I had the wall open, I decided to insulate my hot water pipes some foam pipe insulation. There's a lot going on in the wall, so I had to cut some of the insulation to fit around the drain pipes. The insulation seemed snug enough and there appeared to be enough space for the drywall.

Black foam insulation along one vertical pipe and top horizontal hot water pipe

After measuring for the new drywall piece, I got to cutting. Luckily, one of my coworkers had some extra drywall that he gifted to me (Thanks, Doug!), so I had a full piece of drywall to work with. All of the scraps I had around were shorter than the 54ish inches that I needed.

I also needed to cut out a hole for the electrical socket, so my utility knife got a lot of use. So far so good. I started to screw it in and it fit! I was a little nervous about that because of the added pipe insulation. Just a few more screws and then I'd be ready for the hard part... drywall tape and mudding. And then I did something really really stupid.

I drilled right into a pipe... yep, I could hear water spewing. However, at first it sounded like air, so removed the screw and water went everywhere. You should have seen how fast I darted down 2 flights of stairs to my water main to turn it off!

uhoh

The worst part is I even had a gut instinct right before that screw that told me "check the pictures you took of inside of the wall"... but did I? No. I didn't. Like I said... really really stupid.

I called Roto-Rooter for some emergency plumbing and Lee came to fix it for me for $250. He also showed me how to fix a section of pipe while he was doing it and we were chatting. [Guess who needs a pipe cutter and solder! :)] He was really entertaining. I learned all about his family and a ton about his past history. He made the experience so much better. He could have said, "you should have called someone else to do this type of work," but instead he was very encouraging about all of the work I put into the house. He said homeowners need to know a lot more about their homes so they don't get "taken" (and proceeded to tell me a long story about a horrible contractor and a nice elderly woman). He applauded my independence. His parting words were "Miss Laura, keep on drilling" to which I replied "...in the right places."

Sometimes DIY isn't easier on the wallet, but it's humbling and character-building, right? Maybe I'll even learn to listen to my gut instincts... and that would be priceless.