Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Work in Progress



One of our goals this summer is to get a jump start on the third floor bathroom so that our visitors coming later in the summer have a bathroom on the same floor as the bedroom. Last summer, just before we left for home we had a plumber come in and rough in the plumbing for the salle de bains. You can see the blue pipes for fresh water to come in, and the grey pipes for the waste water to flow out. On the left you can see a drain for the tub; in the middle, pipes and drain for the sink; and on the right, water supply and drain for the toilet. The strange, large pipe running vertically is the insulated flue for the wood stove on the first floor. If you are very sharp you might also notice that the floor seems to sag in comparison to the horizontal grey pipe. This is not an optical illusion. Not only did it sag, it was bouncy. I did not want to replace the floor and sagging beams for reasons I won't go into now, so the solution was to build another floor on top of the old one.



And so..........we constructed a new floor by laying down the equivalent of French 4 X 4's, which will got covered with a subflooring and ultimately Tongue & Groove. This will make it relatively flat, relatively level and definitely non-spongy. Three pluses for any new bathroom. This was not an easy task, nothing in this old house is plumb, vertical, level or straight. One drawback of raising the floor was that we now have to step up into the bathroom, but find this is a rather common occurrence in old French houses.



Once the floor was in place and the ceiling joist were in place, the walls could be built. Again, we used metal studs. In the photo below, you can see the door and window of the bedroom we created last summer, along with various tools and construction residue. The old, not very handsome stone wall will get covered up with drywall, as will the metal studs. Some of the old beams will still be visible.




Progress has been relatively swift to this point. The walls are framed in and the door is in place. Soon, I will wire the bathroom for electricity, hang drywall, put down a floor and then call the plumber to come and continue his work.












2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mon dieu! As always, I am in awe of your creative and construction talents. I would not know where to begin...except to call someone to do everything for me!

Luke hopes to have the honor of using the finished bathroom...possibly next year...or when I win the lottery and no longer have financial constraints! HA!

Anonymous said...

Now you are making your accommodations downright luxurious with a bathroom on the same floor. Not that I minded going down the killer stairs in the middle of the night, really. I can't believe how much you've already accomplished. We are still working on coming, but this bike ride in Iowa is looming large as we make plans for that. You bloggers have been very prolific and I am enjoying all the posts. love, Peggy