Since the fall leaf color is done anywhere within driving distance, we jumped straight into winter with a hike at Blackwater Falls.

Since I’ve been slacking on walking / hiking in recent months, we decided to take a relatively easy hike, and hiked part of the Davis Trail. This is the part of the Allegheny Trail that runs from Blackwater Falls to Cannan Valley State Park.

It was lovely.

Location: Blackwater Falls
Trail: Davis Trail / Allegheny Trail
Distance: 5.1 miles
Elevation: 3203-3669 feet (660 ft)

Thank you, to those who have served, who are currently serving, and to their families.

Thank you.

The eastern panhandle and the southern part of the state are the last areas to lose their leaves. As the eastern panhandle is an easier drive, that’s where we tend to head mid-November.

It was a gray day, and a past peak, although there were still trees that had some leaves.

Harpers Ferry is another place fascinating place to wander around. There is a ton of history there–and not just John Brown’s raid.

There is also some amazing beautify.

Two of my favorite spots there are ruins.

The old water-power ruins.

Wandering around old ruins (and especially finding hidden ruins in the woods) is a reminder of the impermanence of humanity. That of these man-made structures, the only things that are left are the stones our fore-bearers mortared together in an attempt to constrain nature.

And the old church.

I managed to forget to share the pictures from last week’s drive to Berkeley Springs. Neither of us wanted a long drive, but we wanted to a chance to see some leaf color, so off we went.

We went first to Cacapon SP, where a recent storm had taken down a lot of trees, so the road going up to the mountain top was closed, which was disappointing, since I’d hoped to see how the entire valley looked.

But it was still pretty.

Some nice color at the lower elevations.

Then we went to Berkeley Springs, which I always find lovely to walk around.

Beautiful!

I covered most of the big things about the remodel, but wanted to point out some of the smaller things or bits.

The Tile

As I mentioned, we had issues in that the the tub had been installed after the walls were put up, so once we put the new walls up, they were proud of the rest of the walls. This meant a lot of fussing to make sure everything was tiled and waterproofed. And again, my thanks to the gentleman at Davis Tile who spent so much time helping me figure out what I needed to do.

You can see here how the wall has three levels–the new wall with tile, the old wall with tile, and the wall without tile.

This wall–which showcases the new light that I ADORE– you can see again the steps, and also how I didn’t have enough space to put tile between the proud section of wall and the trim of the shelves we put in.

I suppose we could have gone out and bought tiny rectangles of tile, but it didn’t seem like it was at all worth it for that tiny section of mostly-hidden wall.

This is a pretty ridiculous section of wall.

Door trim, wall trim, old wall, tiled old wall, and tiled new wall.

You can also see the new air vent we put in. So much prettier than the other one AND more useful since it’s not under the sink.

You can also see that I suck at caulking; try not to pay too much attention to that.

I adore the cobalt blue tile I got to accent the white tile.

And here is a little more detail of the two built-in shelves. They could have been deeper, with the amount of space we had, but I chose to get pre-made ones, rather than try and make my own.

The Closet

Here is a little more detail of the closet.

You can see the top shelf–we tested to make sure we could easily get hard bins in and out of that space. You can also see how I made the lower shelves deeper than the top shelf. The reason I didn’t make the vertical board deeper to match the shelves is that I wanted it to be easier to get the brooms and such out of the tall open space. Plus, it allows a little more light in.

Towel Rack

As I mentioned before, putting the inset shelves above the toilet meant I had nowhere to put the towel rack. Once I discovered vertical rotating towel racks I knew this was precisely what I wanted.

I also discovered that some towels are made with loops for hanging on hooks, so this works perfectly for hand towels.

And this is right above the vent, so: warm towels in the winter!

And here’s the whole thing.

And if you stumbled here in the middle, here are the posts on the previous bits.

Demolition
The Tub and Tiling
Walls and Built-in Shelves
The Closet
The Floor

A hotly debated subject during the project was the floor–and what was under the linoleum.
I said there was wood flooring in the closet and the rest of the floor was plywood. Michael disagreed and thought the entire floor was wood flooring.

For four months we debated this, because, well, just because.

One thing we did know was that part of the floor under the toilet was spongy and almost certainly needed replaced.

Which is why it took so long to get to the floor.

I’m not allowed to use power tools that might take off an appendage, and Michal flat-out didn’t want to deal with replacing the floor.

So in September I pulled out the linoleum in the closet, and discovered that there was wood flooring under the linoleum. (Why they put linoleum over hard wood I have no idea.

It was vile and disgusting and messy and awful and ridiculously difficult, even thought I hadn’t put the bottom shelf in the closet to leave myself more room.

But after using pry bars and chisels I uncovered: this

After some googling I found recommendations on how to clean up the adhesive, and after most of a bottle of paint thinner and an entire bag of rags, I uncovered planks that were in decent shape, and certainly good enough for the floor of a closet.

Some sanding and polyurethane later I was ready to put up the trim (I bought new trim because almost all the trim in the bathroom was either destroyed during removal or not worth the effort of cleaning to reuse.

All-in-all, I was quite pleased with the result.

The it was waiting for Michael to be ready to take out the rest of the floor.

One of the things we did early on was take a core sample of the floor to determine how thick everything was. Answer: Not very. This meant we were going to have to put a very thin floor down, because I was not about to shave the bottom of the bathroom door.

We’ve got solid wood doors in the upstairs that I spent several months refinishing soon after we bought the house. They may be beat up and damaged in places (someone repeatedly shut a small dog in the bathroom, which displeased the dog apparently) but they’re solid and quite attractive despite the damage.

So I was not interested in shaving wood off the bottom of one of the better features of the house.

But eventually we looked at options and after copious amounts of nagging, Michel cut out the top layer of the floor, to expose the plywood underneath.

Surprisingly, part of the subfloor remained in decent shape, so he only had to cut out part of the subfloor to replace.

We nailed studs to the existing joists to give the new section of floor more support, and then were ready to go.

One of the things we did was move the vent from under the sink to the opposite wall.

If I’d known how easy this would be for Michael, I might have chosen a different sink, but since we had almost in choice in tiny sink cabinets, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference.

Back to the floor!

We went with a very thin vinyl floor, and managed to find an even thinner underlayment to go under it.

What surprised me was that the bathroom floor space is so small, a single vinyl board covered the floor from wall to tub. Would it have looked better to have the sheets run from wall to closet rather than wall to tub? Yeah. Would it have been easier to work with two shorter sheets / boards rather than a single one that had to be trimmed precisely.

Oh yes. Much MUCH easier. Lesson learned there.

But the floor was DONE and I could now finish everything up!

The final bits were a little bit of everything: adding the last of the tile, measuring, cutting and painting the trim, caulking (which I suck at), and looking for any little bits that needed finishing.

We got wooden thresholds, which I stained, and then we were done!

To be honest, finishing was underwhelming. This project has taken almost six months–it felt like the last steps should have been more exciting, but they were–considering everything that had gone before–relatively easy, and then it was done.

This closet was similar to (but slightly smaller than) the closet in the guest bedroom. (There is actually no closet in our bedroom.) Someone had nailed up shelves to make better use of the space, but they also left the door up.

I’ve mentioned how small our bathroom is. I may not have mentioned that there was not initially a fan / vent in the bathroom.

Yeah.

So we took off the door, put in an exhaust fan, but it was still… ugly.

I knew that I wanted a better use of space than we initially had in the closet, and I really wanted something that was not tremendously ugly. But I wasn’t quite sure I had the skills to do this. So after tearing everything apart, I took a brief break and built a bookshelf.

Once I completed that project I had more tools AND a far better comfort with the project.

I didn’t have to replace any drywall in the closet, but I did have a fair amount of patching to do, and slapped on a LOT of primer. I also didn’t remove the interior door trim, so… don’t try to go into the closet and look at the doorway, okay?

First thing I did was determine how much big I needed the top shelf to be, to pull bins easily in and out. Then, I put in the stop shelf. It’s got supports on the side, because initially much of the weight was going to rest upon that top shelf.

Why did I need the extra support? Because I wanted a tall space along the side, for brooms and such.

I decided that I wasn’t sure enough of my skills to trust most of the weight of the lower shelves onto the top shelf, so I ran a stud up the back of the closet, into which I’d the right shelf support.

Ignore the random boards I shoved into the closet, because I had nowhere else to put them. I now had somewhere on both sides to attach the shelves.

I used the pocket jig to put screw holes in the bottom of the shelves at where the studs were (or were supposed to be anyway). The right side was easier, since I was screwing into wood.

Here’s the next shelf! And yes it is, in fact, deeper than the top shelf. I determined that I could put the top shelf up higher if I had more clearance. But the lower shelves could be deeper, since they didn’t have the be maneuvered out.

I measured the crap out of everything, and found some heavy felt bins in dark blue that would work perfectly–I actually spaced the shelves to fit the bins I ordered.

I left the bottom shelf off because I was not going to try to pull the linoleum up with only 12 or so inches of clearance.

I was initially going to leave the shelves natural colored, since I used pine boards, but for a different project I found white stain (Marshmallow!) and a (mostly) clear polyurethane, and decided that would lighten the space up even more, and I ended up being quite pleased with how it turned out.

And that’s how it looks! I was extra delighted with the closet because aside from cutting the boards, I did all the work myself, and it was EXTREMELY SATISFYING.

I actually still have an empty bin, which is AWESOME since as I noted, space is at a premium in this house.

Once the tub was mostly finished, we moved onto the walls around the toilet (the opposite walls were in decent shape and didn’t need demolished).

As I mentioned before, the space between the walls is ridiculously deep, so it seemed ridiculous not to build shelves into that space. The worry was that is the only section of open wall large enough to hold towel racks, so I needed another spot to hang towels. Once I figured that out, we had to figure out how to build the shelf.

Although it probably wasn’t load bearing, there was a stud running up the middle section of where the shelf would go. Thinking back to how we built the bookshelves into the walls in the computer room (Apparently I have no blog posts about any of that work–unsurprisingly, really, since then Grandmom moved in as soon as we finished.) I figured we could just cut out the middle of the stud and brace the edges. This led to so interesting discussions as we tried to figure out how to do this, including the following exchange:

“And just how is that board going to be held in place?”
“Um…. magic?”

We didn’t use magic.

We also put in more outlets, because two outlets did just not cut it, even in a bathroom we rarely used.

Michael built a three-sided box that we slid into the space.

There ended up being an issue, because the box was built with about a quarter inch of extra space on each side, for ease of getting the box into the wall. Then Michael nailed the box to the studs–without remembering that we needed shims to account for that quarter inch. So things were not quite square, but that box is going NOWHERE.

We then put up the rest of the drywall, and taped and mudded.

Painting happened in stages, because we were only going to pull the toilet completely out once. So the upper half of the walls were painted, and we put trim around the shelf.

Initially Michael used L-brackets to put up the shelves. I hated this, so once I got the pocket jig, I ripped out the L-brackets, repainted, and put in new shelves.

Now, we ended up having another issue here that probably won’t be a problem for anyone else ever, unless they also have a teeny bathroom. Because the cement board stood slightly proud of the “regular” wall, we had to order special corner-type tiles, and ended up with a space beside the medicine cabinet that couldn’t have tile–or anything else. If you stand at an angle you can see the unfinished edge behind the medicine cabinet. So…don’t do that if you come over to my house.

The trim was the very last thing to go up, since the floor was the next-to-last thing we did in the bathroom.

The plumbing bits were mostly Michael, since he’s 1) pretty good at plumbing and 2) has better upper-body strength than I do.

We replaced the fixtures and most everything inside the walls, as well as the tub drain.

The walls extremely problematic. The tub had been put in after the drywall and the cement board we got for the wall was much thinner. That meant we had to put boards up over the studs, to make sure the edge of the cement board was just over the lip of the tub.

We got foam board to insulate the wall as well (what we took out looked like shredded cardboard. UGH.

Putting up the cement board involved a lot of measuring and remeasuring, and would have been a LOT easier if there wasn’t a window in the middle of the wall.

Michael replaced all the pipe with PVC, because he finds it easier to work with, and who am I to argue with that.

Because the space between the walls was so deep, I ordered some shelves to inset inside the wall. You can also see here where we added studs not just where the shelves were, but also where the fixtures were going to go.

Once the cement board was up, I taped and then put thinset on all the joints.

I have an extra kitchen scale, so since I was only mixing small batches of thinset (and later grout) I covered the scale in saran wrap and was able to measure by weight, which I always find easier.

After the thinset dried, I applied the waterproofing.

I put two coats of the waterproofing up, because 1) I had the time and 2) I had far more waterproofing than I was going to use.

To keep the bathroom mostly usable during the project, we replaced the sink and fixtures and light relatively early on.

Because the bathroom is so small, and the space for the sink is so small, we had almost no choice in sink and cabinet. I wanted something with a cabinet because a small house means limited storage space, so the remodel was going to give me the most storage space I could get.

Then came the tiling.

The problem here is that no one feels that it’s safe for me to use cutting tools, so while Michael was working on something else, I put whole tiles up on the wall, because one website suggested putting up whole tiles and then filling in the pieces.

This did not work well for me, because getting the tiles the right size to fit in the spaces was annoying and was a problem more than once. I am all but incapable of visualizing things, so I frequently measured tile “backwards” from what I needed, which was frustrating, but also something I was expecting, and so had Michael double check before he cut.

All of which made the process more time-consuming, but wasted less tile.

Also, I did a lousy job bracing the initial row of tile, so they slipped some and were uneven. Don’t screw that up when you do tiling.

We ended up buying a small and inexpensive tile saw, because it ended up being cheaper than renting one. Michael says I probably could have used it safely, but didn’t, since I hate the emergency room.

The good think is that once you grout, the screw ups and errors in the tile become unnoticeable.

Since I had extra cobalt blue tile, I decided to create a pattern with the tile in the shelving niches. It was actually really fun, and if I’d felt more confident in the beginning, I might have done a pattern with the blue tile instead of just stripes. But I’m still pleased with how the tile turned out, despite only making stripes and the number of times I screwed up.

And about that tile…

I went to Davis Kitchen and Tile to see what they had, and in the hope someone might be able to answer a couple of questions for me.

The owner ended up spending probably an hour with me, patiently answering all my questions and helping me figure out what I needed. Considering I went with the cheaper tile, and told him up front that I was doing the work myself, he was amazingly patient and wonderful and kind.

If you need tile (or have a remodeling project), you should definitely go to Davis Kitchen and Tile, because they were marvelous.

Important for the tub & shower
Tile saw
Small metal ruler
Nitrile gloves
Leather gloves
Tile file
Circular tile bits for the drill
Wrist braces (these fit under both my leather and nitrile gloves)

Michael already had most of the plumbing tools, so I’m not 100% what would be recommend there if you’re not already doing plumbing.

This project started on the 17th of May, 2019, and finished on the 3rd of November, 2019.

Yes, it was slow, but 1) we didn’t always know what we were doing 2) we had to learn a lot of new skills as we went (see previous) 3) we did it in our free time 4) we were extremely flexible in what we were going to do, and finally 5) we had another bathroom in the house.

We knew it was going to be difficult in parts, because this is a 1930s house, and things are often just weird. And we discovered plenty more weirdness as we went, which is what this first post is going to be about.

When we first moved in, the toilet leaked and the shower leaked, so we replaced the tub assembly, replaced the sink fixture, and attempted to replace the toilet–except that the bathroom is so small the door wouldn’t close with the new toilet in place, so that fixture sat in the basement until we put in the second bathroom when Grandmom moved in.

That project (adding a second bathroom) is why I felt that we would be able to do this project. We built two rooms (bathroom and computer room) from nothing, and did all the work ourselves, except for tapping the sewer line (because we had two months to get everything done (including emptying the spare room) before Grandmom moved in, and we did NOT have time to for major screw-ups)).

Was this hard? At times, of course it was. We didn’t know what we were doing. We often didn’t have the proper tools. And some things are just hard work. But I learned so much doing this, I feel like when the zombie apocalypse comes I’ll actually have value to contribute.

So here is how things looked when we (mostly) started.

We’d replaced fixtures (as I said) and Michael put in shut-off valves (because this house basically had the whole house shut-off and no others), but otherwise, this is how it’d looked since we moved in in 2001.

The we started tearing things apart, and found all kinds of excitement.

This was the first–but far from the last–time I wondered what the hell we were getting ourselves into.

It was nasty.

We also discovered they built walls across walls and put the tub in after they put in the walls, and just…. ugh. All kinds of ick.

We discovered multiple sockets / switches that had just been plastered over.

I found (I kid you not) razor blades in the wall.

We discovered creative ways were used to make things fit.

I discovered wood floor under the linoleum in the closet.

And some pretty disgusting plywood under the rest of the linoleum.

If that picture doesn’t make it clear, the bathroom is tiny. The floor space is 4′ x 5′ , not including the tub and the closet, so it was often problematic for both of us to be in the bathroom at the same time–especially when the toilet and sink were installed.

So what ended up being important for the demolition?

Tetanus shot
Crowbar
Utility knife (one for each person, really)
Shop vac
Many old shower curtains to be used as drop cloths
Leather work gloves
Dust masks
Hammer
Rubber mallet
Chisels
Drywall saw / knife
Audiobooks / podcasts

Did I mention to make sure your tetanus shot booster is up-to-date? And definitely the dust masks. Even wearing them both of us ended up with a respiratory thing when we were tearing out the shower walls–most likely due to the combination of mold, mildew, and dust particles.

And patience. Lots and lots and lots of patience.

We saw some interesting things on our drive yesterday.

One was so unexpected that I might have squealed, slammed on the brakes, and all but done a U-Turn in the road.

Michael’s Favorite Sign

This just delighted me. It’s like someone let me name a road.

We opted to starve to death, but stopping was briefly was considered.

Surprise. It’s November.

Lots of re-reads this month, but plenty of new books as well, and some very good books that were not re-reads.

I loved Layla Reyne’s Agents Irish and Whiskey series, starting with Single Malt, despite the fact that it had tropes that I really dislike, including a romance between law enforcement partners, a secret off-the-books investigation, and one person committed to the romance and the other… not. Why did it work for me? First and foremost because of Aidan. It had been less than a year since his husband was killed, so he was still processing his grief and afraid to care for someone who might get killed in the line of duty. But also because Jamie was a delight. He was a thorough geek AND an amazing athlete and a good person. And the mysteries were good and there were repercussions for not following the rules. Excellent!

I finished the last (?) Snow & Winter book, The Mystery of the Bones by C.S. Poe which was an interesting mystery and the romance was good as well.

I’m re-reading Patricia Briggs‘s Alpha & Omega series, which has some of my favorite secondary characters in the Mercy-verse (Asil).

So what did I read? Quite a variety. (Note that the LGBT books are also boinking books.)

Mystery

At Your Service (2018) Sandra Antonelli (Rating: 8/10)

Mystery, Historical

Lord John and the Private Matter (2003) Diana Gabaldon (Lord John) (Rating: 8/10)

Mystery, LGBT

The Mystery of the Bones (2019) C.S. Poe (Rating: 8.5/10) (Snow & Winter)
Agents Irish and Whiskey
Single Malt (2017) Layla Reyne (Rating: 8.5/10)
Cask Strength (2017) Layla Reyne (Rating: 8.5/10)
Barrel Proof (2017) Layla Reyne (Rating: 9/10)
Holmes & Moriarity
Somebody Killed His Editor (2009) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 7/10)
All She Wrote (2010) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 7.5/10)

Romance, Historical

The Work of Art (2019) Mimi Matthews (Rating: 7.5/10)
A Convenient Fiction (2019) Mimi Matthews (Rating: 6/10) (Parish Orphans of Devon)

Romance, LGBT

Riven (2018) Roan Parrish (Rating: 7.5/10)
A Duke in Disguise (2019) Cat Sebastian (Rating: 5/10)

Fantasy, Historical

Gunpowder Alchemy (2014) Jeannie Lin (Rating: 6/10) (The Gunpowder Chronicles)

Fantasy, LGBT

Mainly by Moonlight (2019) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 6/10) (Bedknobs and Broomsticks)

Fantasy, Supernatural

Alpha & Omega
Alpha and Omega (2008) Patricia Briggs (Rating: 8/10)
Cry Wolf (2008) Patricia Briggs (Rating: 8/10)
Hunting Ground (2009) Patricia Briggs (Rating: 8.5/10)
Fair Game (2012) Patricia Briggs (Rating: 8.5/10)

And now THE STATS!

All ebooks this month. I’ve been listening to podcasts instead of audio books. And just under half the books were re-reads, because I finished a series I really liked and then was stumped for what to read next.

eBook: 18
Multiple Formats: 4
Re-read: 7

Mostly mystery and romance, and half of those were boinking books. But almost half were fantasies, so not that far off from normal.

Fantasy: 6
Mystery: 12
Romance: 16
Boinking: 7

No books written by guys this month. Male authors are at only 38% this year, so I don’t think they’re going to catch up.

Female: 14
Initials: 1
Male Pseudonym: 3

And the character breakdown. More than half the books had make protagonists (because M/M romances) and although almost all the books had one white main character, there were plenty of minorities as the other primary character and secondary characters.

Male: 9
Female: 8
Ensemble: 1
White: 17
Minority: 7
Minority 2ndary: 5
Straight: 8
LGBTQ: 10
LGBTQ 2ndary: 1

And that’s what I read in October. Did you read anything excellent recently?