Before The Path Came The Re-bath

With no pan liner or sub floor left, the shower pan sat directly on the severely decayed floor joists. It was dangerous to stand under this shower, much less in it! But this was not the most urgent repair needed on this job.





As bad as this bathroom was it only one of three and one of two showers. 








The uppermost deck was like a tree house with a bird feeder. However it was weak, slimy, and more than ten feet in the air. With yellow and black tapes to point out broken boards and a large inaccessible wasp colony in the soffit, this deck was in need of immediate repair. The soffit couldn't be accessed safely at this point as the deck wasn't strong enough for ladders yet.
                                                                     

The living room deck was also in need of serious repair with even more and larger holes. The joists and posts were in surprisingly good shape and only the band board under the join of the two decks required replacement. 


The scattered chairs on this deck were placed to keep anyone from stepping in holes.

The lowest deck would have needed more chairs than it had room for.


Unfortunately the tooth brush tree (Grendever Lilian said the pounded twigs of sour wood trees like this were favorites for tooth brushing) was split several places and hollow down low. It leaned very heavily on the rail and had already pushed it nearly off.

to be continued...

Rainy Roof Blues

We really were't Quite ready to jump these two little roofs, but the soffit repair we got the scaffold for went faster than we expected. 

So since we still had the scaffold paid for another four days we went for it. We finished the first one and took Sunday off. We were productive enough Monday that we had only the hips and the flashing covers at the top to go. We were primed to wrap up well before noon Tuesday (when the scaffold was due back). So we came ready to leap in this morning.

We arrived ready to knock it out, but it was raining and it just got harder as the morning wore on. All that good energy was gonna do something cool. Time for an experimental cornbread!

Alrighty then, we did catch a 
break. The next day was sunny.
Now the finished roofs 
 look like they were 
always that way.
    

Under The Privy Path

 Before we could begin to place our below floor level shower pan all of the floor joists in the shower area had to be sister ed. Removal and replacement was not workable since there were numerous wires and pipes attached to and passing through the half rotted original joists. Copying the method used on other face joined joists in the vicinity we added plywood spacers between and fished the sisters in carefully as you can see in the picture showing the pipes and a speck of camouflage. Wiggling alone was not sufficient , and most of the sister-ed joists lost some width at the tips just getting into place. The pan liner that failed was 30+ years old, an 1/8 inch                                                                                       thick and made of paper and tar. Only a few                                                                                                 fragments of it remained trapped in the corners.  

Using  parallel cuts down to carefully measured lines as guides, the tops of the new joists (and what ever was left of the old ones) were broken off in chunks then chiseled down.  






 Visible above and to the left of the pipes one of the sharpie inked guide lines is visible. Where possible the skill saw did the bulk of the cuts. Most were straight across about an inch apart. Up against the ends a handsaw made stop cuts. At the sides safety glasses and free hand, guard back, skill-saw cuts made half way   through cuts (like those still visible behind David in the corner), these     allowed about half the bulk to broken off leaving the rest to be chiseled flat.   

This very solid bench is only stacked together (the clamp kept anyone from sitting on it till it was fastened together). It's two layered top allowed space for 1/4 inch plywood shims in the corner to give it fall to the front.

Here the extra framing serves as additional anchor points for the bench, but mostly it's there to catch the edges of the Hardie-board. It also helps keep the vinyl liner in place, covering the bench, running up the wall, out past the joints of bench to wall, and down the face into the pan. While the earlier photos show plastic bags stapled up to keep the insulation back, that was replaced with tar-paper. 





After the extreme water damage caused by the failure of the previous pan liner, when I heard no curb I immediately thought of waterproofing the whole shower entry area. I began researching  Schluter kerdi ,and Redguard systems both of which looked promising at first. Their doped together membrane lining systems both looked very waterproof, but neither one seemed compatible with standard adjustable shower drains like the one pictured here. These systems seem designed to make it necessary to purchase their preformed pans which with their underlayment, it's tape, and joint dope would have tripled the material cost for
 the shower. 

 The niche on  back wall of the shower required 1/2 inch underlayment (hence the shadow of the second layer just above the pan). The pan liner extends out the doorway of the shower 4 feet and up the wall about 4 inches on each side. Inside the shower it's a similar story. The pan liner is attached 3 to 4 inches above the surface of the finished pan behind the Hardie-board which extends to 1/2 an inch or so from the bottom of the pan inside the liner.     

    The liner can also be seen wrapping the wall headed for the face of the throne alcove, whose face it climbs as well behind the Hardie-board.

Walking The Privy Path

The floor itself is the first hint. More common in the garden than in your average bathroom, these four times sealed, Old Chicago bricks look a bit like a garden path and are the most slip resistant bathroom floor I've ever seen.

The no curb doorway
and a below the floor shower pan are additional refinements that make this one of a kind bathroom  rustic yet accessible. Head to toe soldier courses cap off the brick at each end of the privy path and  face 
 the throne alcove.