Archives October 2017

Over the past two weeks, a lot of progress has been made on the guest house bathroom. Most noticeably, the door between the living room in the guest house and the bathroom was put in, which involved cutting through the wall to create the rough opening for the door. Also, I built a methane vent that vents any gasses that build up in the drains to the septic tank, preventing them from coming up through the flor drains in the utility room or the shower drain. Finally, the drain lines for the various fixtures were installed.

For the methane vent, I used 4″ PVC and cut through the outer wall with a multi-tool:

I then used a 90 degree turn and ran PVC through the opening, and connected it to an aluminum vent cover on the outside.

This finalized the utility room plumbing, which is in good shape now:

After that, I moved on to the door installation. First, I used a multi-tool and a reciprocating saw to cut through the dry wall and removed the studs.

Bought a solid oak door that was pre-hung, and installed it in the rough opening.

After the utility room plumbing was done, my next step on the guest house bathroom project was to pour concrete to replace the concrete that had been removed when the drain pipes were put in. I used 1,280 pounds of Quikrete Crack Resistant concrete, which is purpose built for pouring slabs like garage floors.

Since it was only 16 bags worth, I hand mixed it in a wheelbarrow before pouring:

It was a pretty easy process to fill in the slab and level the concrete, filling in around the pipes and matching the height of the original slab.

Once the initial concrete pouring was done, I placed the shower base and cut the PVC drains down for both the shower and the utility room floor drain, and installed the drain fixtures. You may notice that the shower base is a different shape from the previous post. I realized that I needed to switch to a diagonal opening in order to have the shower entrance not awkwardly positioned in relation to the toilet and the sink in the bathroom.

After the shower base was installed, I poured a layer of self leveling base concrete over top of the slab, which forms a smooth surface on which I will ultimately lay tile for the bathroom floor.

Finally, I cleaned up some concrete spray and dirt that had found its way onto the shower base, and then covered it in plastic tarp so that it won’t get dirty when I start framing the bathroom and utility room walls, which is the next step in this project.

Before pouring concrete and framing the walls for the guest house bathroom and utility room, I needed to determine the location of the shower. This determines where the walls will go, since the shower needs to be up against the bathroom walls, and its location is determined by where the drain pipes were placed. Therefore, I purchased the base for the shower and set it in place.

The base will be removed to pour concrete (along with the logs that are temporarily holding it in place), and then will be put back into position before framing to make sure the walls are set correctly. When completed, here is what the full shower enclosure will look like: