We haven't undertaken any renos in quite a while, for a few reasons.  The rush and pressure associated with the '08 holiday season bedroom reno burned us out, and the new garage roof emptied our pockets.

So, we have been limited to doing tiny little things, more maintenance than renos.  But the itch has been there, unsatisfied.  It was worsened when I had an idea for my daughter's condo.  She has rats as pets, and it turns out 'the boys' have delicate respiratory systems.  So her new condo, with all the carpet and melamine off-gassing, and the accumulated dust (because she places as little priority on housekeeping as her mother) has been problematic for them.

A few weeks ago, I got an idea that I put to her:  remove the carpet in her bedroom, replace it with inexpensive laminate, and move the boys there.  It would be easier to keep this one room dust-free and properly humidified, and they'd be more comfortable.  Her room is just over 100 sq ft, so the cost would not be high and DS and I could do the labour.  In a few years, when her budget is not so tight, she could re-do the entire condo, and wouldn't have to feel bad about removing an investment of about $100-$150.  She liked the idea, so I began to scout for deals on laminate.

On a visit to Big Orange, we noticed a special deal on some at $0.89 per sq foot.  Yes, it's a dump of laminate on NA by an EEC mfr, but that's how we got our ceramic-look laminate for the main floor of our house a few years ago and we have been very pleased with it.  And it looks real.  Most visitors squat down to touch it and are surprised, in fact.  Anyway, this product looked pretty good, and is slightly thicker than most.  I phoned DD later and got approval in principal.  The next day, I returned and ensured they had enough for her job.  For $153 and change, she got some pretty nice-looking flooring (that's now taking up space in our front hall, unfortunately)

Big Orange knows its customers.  Every once in a while, I get these 'spend $299 or more as many times as you want over the next 6 weeks and don't pay any interest or principal until 8 to 10 months from now.'  This is how we renovated our entire city house.  I think we paid $3 in interest once, when we had miscalculated how much was left to pay and had a balance for a couple weeks.  I had received one of those tantalizing offers some time in October, but after consulting with DS, had tossed it.  Or so I thought.  I felt bad that I couldn't offer such a benefit to DD, but the bill was small enough that it wasn't really an issue.

On our last visit up, we decided we were ready to start tacking the upstairs bath.  We haven't used it since moving in, because the toilet doesn't flush well.  We're fairly certain we have figured out why.  The house has a steel roof with a fairly steep pitch.  The plumbing vent stack is at the bottom of the slope.  No barrier of any kind was installed to protect the vent stack from sliding snow.  It got knocked off it's connection in the attic, venting foul-smelling (and dangerous) gases into that airspace.  So, the previous owners stuffed something into the top of the main stack, and into the smaller connector stacks coming from the kitchen and upstairs bath sinks.

How did we figure all that out?  There are several clues.  First, in the eave storage space where the broken vents are, there is no smell.  Not a whiff.  Second, when the clothes washer empties, we can hear a bubbling in the bathtub and in the entrance utility sink.  Same for when we send a load of dishwater down the drain.  And, the upstairs toilet flushes, but drains s-l-o-w-l-y, yet has never backed up.  For a while, though we were puzzled by the fact that the downstairs toilet flushes fine.  I suspect it is because it is a low-flush toilet, and we are very conservative in our use, not flushing for every liquid 'deposit'.  It therefore has the airspace of the vent stack between the first and second floors to help it, which is fairly wide-diameter pipe, and lots of time to replenish that air between flushes.

Anyway, we hope this is the case.  If not, then we'll have to re-do the line from the toilet to the main stack.  This will mean opening the bathroom ceiling, but we can do this and then just build a 'box' around the lower plumbing, and it will give a little more interest to the ceiling.

Before we even knew we had permission to buy the place, we had bought a new shower, vanity & sink combo, and faucet for the upstairs bath.  A while ago, we bought a new toilet.  So, on our last visit up, I dove into the plumbing preps.  Although the water to this bathroom has been shut off for some time, there are no fixture shut-off valves.  And, all the supply lines are exposed.

Having decided how we wanted to hide the supply lines, I started cutting into them so I could remove the sink, shower plumbing and toilet.  There were no threaded connections.  Everything was soldered.  Mind-boggling.  Although, I guess it helps to ensure that you'll have to call a plumber if you want to change anything, thus more money in their pockets.  Armed with my trusty Bernz-o-matic, some fittings, and some bread*, I soldered shut-off valves for the sink, toilet and shower.  Most folks don't for the shower, but I don't see why not.  Of 8 soldered joints, only one had to be re-done because of vapour contamination.  I was pretty pleased with myself.

We then started removing the ship-lap boards from the back wall, so we could install a vapour barrier.  When we got to the end of the back wall, however, we realized that the side wall on the bathroom had been installed after the back wall and there was no way to remove the final plank without removing the side wall.  Since we were going to have to futz around with the door anyway, because the shower won't fit through it, we decided to go ahead with removing the side wall.  We would then frame a new one and put drywall up, at least on the inside of the bath.

It has always been our assumption that the walls of the bathroom were just two ship-lap cedar planks, back to back.  Turns out not.  The walls are made of 3" thick cedar boards of varying widths.  There is a groove cut into the long 3" wide faces of each board, and a small piece of plywood, slid into the grooves of adjoining boards, hold them together.  The boards are nailed top and bottom.  Fairly ingenious.  Now, we're trying to think of what we'll used these hefty pieces of cedar for...

DS installed about R6 of fibreglass between the strapping, then sealed everything up with a vapour barrier.  We'll add foamboard insulation to the ceiling, then re-drywall the ceiling and back wall.  We'll also eventually be adding insulation on the outside of the knee wall, but at least for now we've done a bit to make the house more airtight.

On the drive home, we were discussing things we could do that would cost little or nothing.  I suggested that we proceed with removing all the inside boards on the ground floor and do the same thing.  Or, continue with doing the rest of the kneewall upstairs.

When we got home, while sifting through some paperwork, I happened upon the (happily not discarded) nifty offer from Big Orange.  On a visit this past Sunday, we purchased some stick-on vinyl plank flooring in a cork pattern, and the control valve for the shower (since we already have the shower head itself), and some other items.  So, we're all set for getting that bathroom to a useable state.

And, because the family decided (without us) that the holiday celebration would be elsewhere this year, we have no time pressures on us.

*There is sometimes no way to completely empty all the lines when you solder.  Stuff a ball of fresh white bread into the pipe opening.  It absorbs the water, preventing steam from ruining your soldered connection.  The heat turns it to 'toast', and it will flush out of the pipe.  You have to be sure to flush it out before installing any faucets or the valve cylinder on a control valve.