Pulp Bath Reno 2

Pulp Bath Reno 2

Another good week on the Pulp Bath Reno 2 (at least most of the week, I’ll explain later in the broadcast)! After a touch of struggle in landing the first of the ½ inch sheetrock boards on the ceiling, being a tad awkward and unbalanced, we devised a method of using two ladders (8 foot and 6 foot), adjustable lag poles (like a telescoping support pole) and the two of us to get our ceiling sheetrock into position.

As with most rooms, they are not exactly sized so that 4’ x 8’ sheetrock boards fit exactly in place, aka, some cutting required prior to the actual “set in place” move. You really want to hit your ceiling beam strapping on the edges so the boards are not flapping in the breeze (given, half inch sheetrock is fairly strong and probably won’t move unless you put some pressure on it, but best to land it solid), and then there are lights/ceiling fixtures that require their appropriate openings. What does that entail, you ask? Well, lots of measuring (and then measure it again)! You also have to take into account that anything you do on the ground will be completely reversed when you put the board up as it has to be flipped 180 degrees to get the “face” facing down at the floor. And yes, totally messed that up on one of the cut outs for a recessed light, luckily able to reuse that piece further down in the install, negating one more run to Lowe’s for an additional sheet (which would have put a dent in the day’s proceedings)!

With ceiling drywall up and in place, next up….the cabling for the heated floors (the orange membranes previously set in place). Now the way it works with the Schluter Ditra floor heat cabling is you order it to work with the square footage of your space to be heated. You do not run the cable under bath tubs or cabinets, and you stay certain distances away from things like plumbing lines and radiator heat pipes. Throw that all together and come up with a number and your cable is sent in an exact length that cannot be cut, i.e., what you have is what needs to be installed. Then the fun part. It is made to lock into those orange floor membrane “knobs” and you need to run it in a pattern (for the most part it is a 3-3 pattern, keeping 3 knobs between the heat cable wherever you go). There is, however, no set game plan for how you lay out that pattern out meaning you pretty much just have to get going and figure out where it is going to be when you get closer to the end. Confusing? Yup, but after a couple installs you learn not to freak out about it and remember that small adjustments and pattern changes can make up for most plus or minus situations on the cabling. This time around we were closing in on the finish and realized we had about 60 feet of cable to go (which was not going to happen). A couple quick calculations and then pulling the cable back up from about one third of the room, changing to an up and down short pattern and re-setting it did the trick, ending up just to the right of the toilet in what we like to call a “dead space”. Mission accomplished!

As alluded to earlier, had to have minor surgery the other day, all is well, thank you, but I am currently unable to raise one arm above my head, lift more than a gallon of milk and banned from driving for 7 days while I recoup from it all so expecting progress to slow down a touch. No worries, we’ll get done what we can get done and be back and better than ever before you know it!

Some progress pics adjacent and below. See you next week!