Redwood Deck

Here’s a really nice deck I did for a good friend. 

The above pic is close to final but there is still a bit of work left. Cable rails, stain on the steps, etc. 

I failed to take any pictures until we were well along. So here is a pic of the stout undercarriage of this deck. I had recently completed a pole barn so this is basically stout enough to hold up a large barn. Or a truck. Or a tank. It has 6x6 pressure treated posts on 8’ centers with double 2x12 girders through bolted. Plus the railings and posts are planted 3’ deep. 

See?  Stout. The first thing I put in is the temporary frame surrounding the deck to show the final dimensions.  After customer OK, I then build the support structure inside it. I spend a lot of time on the alignment of what is essentially a mock up, making sure it is aligned and looks good from every angle. 

You can see it turned out pretty strait. And it lines up perfectly with the existing concrete stairs. 

At this point I spent a bit of time mocking up the built in seats. I thoroughly tested the seat angles for comfort by having every customer and contractor that happened by try out the mockup. Comfortable for tall and short alike, without cushions. 

Here it is, basically done. The seats on the side make it feel very comfortable and protected. I’ve already spent many a summer’s eve playing music and gazing at the stars. And the open end now has cable rails on it that don’t block the view. 

The stairs down to the large back yard. The yard falls away from the house so that the far edge of the deck is a good 4 feet off the ground, so even though the end is open, it feels very protected. The deck does a great job of adding significant living space to a somewhat small house. 

Another Bath, This Time Make It a Double

This one is a serious remodel, to include moving walls and fixtures, tiling multiple rooms/surfaces, and a complete fabrication of a shower. 

 

After. 

 

Before, from the bedroom. Here is a typical 1970s 2x16 closet. And the curious thing was the huge amount of unused space at the end of the bed in the master. 

 

And the master bath had only 30 sf, with about 32" for the toilet. 

 

And a mere 2 ft vanity. 

 

And the guest bath had 50 sf

 

And a double vanity. 

 

We spent five hours trying to reconfigure things to get better use out of the space. 

 

While the owners was in Moab for the week, we hurriedly moved the wall in on the second bath after removing one of the sinks and set the bath up for use while gutting and rebuilding the master bath. 

 

Here we knocked out the wall at the back of the closet and will move it a foot into the second bath, whose dimensions will now be set. 

 

Demolition for the whole project fit in the back of my old F150. Just one load. 

 

Wall between the bedroom closet and the second bath is temporarily gone. Closet wall is gone too. 

 

The closet has morphed from 2x8 to 5 deep by 6 wide. We did a full size mockup in order to test whether a 5x5 closet could work as a walk in. It couldn't. Minimum 6 ft wide required. So we went back to the drawing board to find 5 sf somewhere in the plan. It took a while but this is our final solution. And it worked. 

 

Now we have room for a much larger no-door shower. And since the room is still small, we chose to make it seem larger by cutting a notch out of the shower wall so visibility into the shower and from the shower into the rest of the bath will make the room seem larger. 

 

Here is the underlying rubber gasket for the packed sand shower floor. 

 

Corners folded up for no leakage. 

 

The packed sand installed. It's actually concrete that won't shrink as it cures. Graded gracefully (1/4" per ft) to the center drain. 

 

Wonderboard installed so all of the tile has 1/2" of concrete backing for solidity. 

 

Two nooks for shower necssities. Keeps the shower looking clutter free from the outside. 

 

The floor is now tiles, after a complete layer of Red Guard has been applied to provide the second impermeable layer in the shower. 

 

A corner seat -- quartz from Granite Concepts in Lewiston -- was added because the customer seems to be in a cast or boot about a quarter of every year. Nicely smoothed on the edge. 

 

Electric floor heat mat. I put one of these in just about every bathhroom now. 

 

Concrete poured on the electric heat mat. And tile being laid out for look. 

 

The floor heat thermostat is in and working. 

 

Tile laid on the floor. Grout next. 

 

The finished bath with new vanity. 

 

Nice new low flow toilet. These are practically free now with the rebate. 

 

And the glass for the shower wall is installed. Nice and open, yet clean looking. 

 

The second bath used similar tile in a slightly different pattern. 

Expanding a Bath

Here is a bath I expanded and remodeled for a neighbor that trusted me with modifications of his home, even though I had less than 6 months experience with my new home remodel business. 

 

Here is the new half of the bath, nearly finished, with the new fixtures still being installed. 

 

The old bath was quite small, but there was a large, little-used room toward the front of the house that could be broken up to add to the existing bath, adding a tub and a heated wood floor, while retaining the character and decor of the original bath. 

 

Exploratory surgery on the wall behind the vanity. 

 

Careful demolition revealed a sewer vent line that needed to be moved to expand the bath. 

 

Two layers of subfloor already existed, so we were able to pull up a portion of of it in the walkway to install a heat mat in a 3/4" thick pour of leveling concrete. 

 

Note the furring strips used later for nailing the reclaimed maple flooring. 

 

The sensor for the floor heat thermostat. 

 

Pouring the concrete, using the furring strips as a depth gauge. 

 

We got the high end programmable thermostat, but I would probably opt for the lesser model next time due to the slow temp change of the heater. It takes more than a few hours to raise the temp 10 degrees, so it's almost more efficient to just leave it on all of the time. 

The heater takes about the same power as leaving a 100w light bulb on all the time. 

 

Heater poured, cured and working. 

 

I found some reclaimed maple flooring in good shape at Wasankari for half the price of new. It also worked better because it had virtually the same cut as the reclaimed flooring in the original bath. 

And to answer your question, yes the heat wood floor worked wonderfully, providing a soft, gentle warmth to the whole room. 

 

This bath is all corners!

 

I sanded the whole floor to get it all to the same level and to apply a consistent finish to both the old and new floor sections. That's a serious floor sander/grinder. 

 

Here is the business end. And the pic shows the trick I use to make sure I sand all sections of the floor equally. Periodic pencil marks that must all be sanded away to prove I sanded everywhere. 

 

Can't get into the corners with the big sander, so I had to use a corner sander, not shown. 

 

Most of the woodwork was salvaged from demolition of the previous bath due to careful removal and storage, but expansion of the bath required additional trim to be cut and stained to match previous woodwork as well as possible. This required a bit of stain mixing. Here is the new trim. 

 

The customer chose a natural, absorbent wall mud texture which required two applications. Cool stuff, and surprisingly useful to absorb bath moisture for gentle later release, alleviating mold problems. 

 

Installing the new trim to match the old. 

 

Here is the newly tiled shower, using subway tile, prior to grout. Note the notch cut out of the shower wall to admit more light into what used to be dark shower. 

 

Grouted subway tile. 

 

The customer chose to modify a purchased antique chest of drawers into a vanity with surface-mounted sinks. 

 

The trick here is to make room for the sink plumbing while still allowing the use of the drawers. Here are the modified drawers with slots to avoid the fixed plumbing. 

 

The customer also asked that the bathroom door be turned around to open into the bedroom rather than into the bath, allowing less conflicting use of space. It was a trick but we did it. Here also is the new vanity installed within. 

 

Swapping the door frame. 

 

Nan found this awesome recycled plastic with actual birch branches embedded for use as a splash guard and light source in the newly opened notch in the shower wall. 

 

Here it is installed. 

 

Reverse side. 

 

The new part of the bath, with the old claw foot tub procured by the customer years ago, now installed. Awesome, comfortable soaker. 

 

The original bath with the new vanity. 

 

My plumber. He's awesome. 

 

Anticlimactic shot of the tortured shower curtain rod necessary to deal with the new shower window.