time for (heated) flooring.

In addition to the whirlpool tub, we thought it seemed nice to have a heated floor. Especially since it would be tile. Especially since it's a small space, so the heat from the floor radiating may just heat the whole room and we can close off the heater vent. And, especially since I had run a spare circuit that only had two outlets on it, and the flooring element only uses 12W per square foot (the space is 50 square feet). Oh, and lastly... because all the walls were torn up and we were starting from scratch, as opposed to trying to wire the programmable control in an existing wall.

So it would be relatively painless, and provide another bit of luxury.

And, finding both the programmable thermostat (there really is no point in having a heated floor you have to get out of bed to turn on, seriously) and the floor element on Ebay for half the cost of Home Depot sealed the deal.

On President's Day, we got to work... With the electrical box already wired and ready to go, all we had to do was layout the mat and run the wires - electrical from the mat to the box, and the floor sensor from the box to the middle of the mat.

The electrical cable was sort of thick, so I took my plunge router to the subfloor to cut out a channel -

We then just stapled along both edges of the mat and cut it to fit the 90º corner to the other door -

The point the manual makes is to test the resistance and continuity of the floor sensor wire and mat power leads, respectively. So before laying the first tile we tested each, first the resistance of the floor sensor -

The ohm meter read 17.73 (20k ohm scale, so about 18,000 ohms) which was exactly what it should be based on the temperature of the room.

The white/green and black/green measure no continuity (which was correct), and the white and black did (also correct) -

So the mat and sensor worked. Time to lay some tile! We decided we wanted a dark, not-shiny grey tile like this (well, not that crazy pattern - but that color and sheen) -

And when we were at Lowe's picking up I-forget-what for this bathroom, we wandered through the tile aisle and found six cases of tile on clearance ($30/dozen) - so we bought all six! Scott and I worked together to mix the mortar and lay the tiles -

The tricky part was the transition of tiles above the mat to just bare subfloor, and keeping them level with each other. So with each tile we'd check level, lengthwise and widthwise -

Cutting the hole for the toilet trap was fun (nice photo Scott heh!) -

And one corner done!

All of the whole tiles are laid. Now I'll spend the evenings with the tile saw in the bathroom cutting the rest of the tiles around all of the edges, before mixing up another batch of mortar and laying them. Then we'll need to grout and the flooring will be done!

Next up... walls (and more tiling)...

time for (the rest of the) plumbing.

My arch nemesis... this cast iron behemoth -

My ultimate weapon of choice... my trusty sawzall, armed with a Diablo diamond grit cast iron cutting blade -

Ok, so by 'ultimate' I mean it wasn't my first. Mainly because I couldn't initially imagine how I'd cut the 2" vent stack on the right in that top photo without blowing through the finished wall of our bedroom on the other side. I got lucky with the first cut on the 1-1/2" drain, where I had just used leftover metal cutting blades I had lying around. Not wise. That took a while, and a bit of muscle. But they were short, so it was easier to not cut through the wall.

So for the larger vent stack, I went a different route: I rented a pipe cutter like this bad boy for $24. It seemed that would do the trick, without any chance of blasting through the wall directly behind the pipe. But... it failed, mainly because the chain links were too big, so even opened as far as it would go and the closest link we could attached, when we levered the beast all the way shut it only begun to dig its teeth into the iron.

Bummer.

So I broke out the sawzall, and got creative. It was the angle and length of the blade I was up against, and the fact the vent stack was about an inch from the sheetrock behind it. But I realized... if I notched the framing stud and cut with the sawzall through the notch, I could keep the angle more parallel to the sheetrock - thereby, (hopefully) not cutting into it.

I gave it a shot... and, well, it worked!

That's the cast iron with the new 2" ABS attached by a Fernco flexible coupler, and the notch in the stud is where I stuck the sawzall through to cut the cast iron pipe. It still took some muscle, and I kept spraying the pipe with water to cool it down as I cut. But about fifteen minutes or so on each of the two cuts and I could take that section of cast iron and chuck it out the front door (I actually did this, onto the driveway... it was good times).

It was then a matter of cutting and glueing all the new ABS to make the new drain where I needed it.

Well, seems simple enough. But it required doing it one piece at a time, dry-fitting, measuring, cutting. Repeat. A lot. The line jutting over from the old drain to where I needed the new drain had to slope at least the standard 1/4" per linear foot, but I just took a level to it and when it wasn't level I called it good. Strapped the section above the 90º junction to the 2x4 brace and kept going.

Oh, and redo that stupid mistake I made where I used red PEX for the cold and, well, blue for the hot.

That was a dumb, dumb idea because after I cut, refitted new PEX with the right color-coding, and turned on the water it, well... leaked. One of the push-on fittings seemed to be the culprit. And it was 11 o'clock at night, so I couldn't do anything about it until morning. So that dripped all night, and bright and early the next day I ran to the store to get a fitting to find out, well... it wasn't the fitting. It was the little 3" piece of PEX pipe. So I cut a new piece, fitted it, turned back on the water and... no leaks!

Finally... the moment of truth, where I had to move the vanity into place, connect the hot and cold supplies and the drain, and find out what all leaked. Good times. My heart was racing. I fitted everything -

and turned on the faucets, then watched as the water drained... no leaks!

(The painter's tape is so we don't mar the edges moving it in and out of the bathroom)

Lastly, an experiment... To change the condenser tubing for the furnace from running out the back of the house where it had been installed to drain with the house plumbing. So I ran a length of 1-1/2" ABS off the drain up into the attic -

In the attic, I pulled the tubing from the back of the house over to this new drain stack and fitted it into the plumbing. Only time will tell if this will drain properly (it's warmer out now so the furnace isn't kicking in and the condenser isn't running as often ). If it doesn't work, I'll just seal off this extra stack and screw the tubing into the outlet at the back of the house. If it does, it'll mean we don't have to worry about it freezing every winter when it gets below 32ºF.

But regardless... the plumbing is finished! Next... clear out the bathroom to install the heated flooring element and then tile the floor before (at last) putting up walls and starting to make this space feel more like an actual room...

time for electrical.

Ok, so we now have lights and a fan and heated flooring and outlets in the bathroom...

But backing up a bit, I first had to figure out the wiring scheme for the lights, which I was running off a single circuit devoted to all the overhead lights in the house. Oh, and since this bathroom is a jack and jill bathroom with two doors, I needed to throw in a 3-way switch into the circuit.

I started the original circuit when I had to wire a front porch light after painting the house, which looked like this -

But yeah, throw in a 3-way switch. I drew out a diagram, scratched it out, drew out another, scratched it out, drew out a third, and that's when I felt like I had gotten it right...

The hot coming into the box was tied off with the hot in the 14/3 cable to the 3-way switch and the hot going out of the box to the shower light a few feet to the right. The neutrals were tied from the cable coming in and going out, and the cable going to the first fixture (yeah, there are three fixtures on this switch), while the neutral in the 14/3 cable was coded 'hot' and ran - along with the traveler cable - to each of the two switches.

Yeah, it looked right. But I wouldn't know until I wired it all together. So I spent a couple hours in the attic drilling holes through the joists, running cable, and pulling it through the top plate of the wall framing. Then I tied everything together the way I had drawn it a third time -

Then flipped the breaker back on in the basement, and at last one of the 3-way switches... nothing. Oh well. I figured I'd look at my diagram again and try to - wait! The fixture (being a 1920s replica) had a switch on it, too! So I flicked that and... boom! Light!

It worked! It actually worked.

So the hard part done, the rest of the work I needed to do was cleaning up the mess of old wiring so I could splice in the fan (since I opted for a fancy fan control with a humidity sensor, it needed a constant power source - a neutral - so I couldn't wire it like a light fixture in that first circuit), wire the light above the shower on another switch, and take the spare circuit we wired when we ran cables for the whirlpool tub to wire a GFCI outlet - and second outlet on the load side - and splice from the line side to branch off to power the heated flooring element.

Not tough. A little complicated, but not tough.

Much cleaner than before, with just a single junction box that will be hidden in the wall to splice in the cable for the fan -

The box on the right side of where the vanity will be, with the GFCI box, fan switch, and dimmer for the light over the shower -

The boxes on the left side of the vanity: the 3-way dimmer and outlet that is wired on the load side of the GFCI, and the box where the programmable control (which I found new on Ebay for almost half of what Home Depot was charging) for the flooring element will go -

The whole mess, more or less -

And the pile of old electrical crap that I removed (yay!) -

Seriously, a couple of those boxes looked like the wiring versions of a rat's nest.

And the fixtures, which - now that they're installed - mean I don't have to use my work light anymore -

And the shower light -

Phwew. Now I just have to finish up the plumbing (cutting the 2" cast iron vent stack and installing a bunch of ABS drain and vent pipes, as well as a quick fix on the supplies for the sink and toilet) before I can (yay!) start hanging the walls, installing the heated floor element (I know I linked to Home Depot, but seriously - Ebay has this stuff significantly cheaper!), and tiling the floor...