Kitchen Ceiling: Drywall/Plaster

Many of the rooms in the house have exposed rafter ceilings. The ceilings that have lath and plaster have sagged and cracked over time. Here's how it works:

-after the house was framed, the lath​ was put up on any wall or ceiling that was going to get plastered. Lath is strips of Doug Fir (same as framing) that are about 1&1/2" wide and about 5/16" thick. There are intentional gaps of about 1/4" left between the slats for the plaster.

-the plaster is applied over the lathe and some of it squishes through the gaps in the lath, which holds the plaster in place after it dries​

Backside of lath and plaster wall

-​Over time, the wood lath swells and contracts throughout the day and the seasons, while the plaster gets more and more brittle

-the effect of gravity on the now cracked ceiling plaster helps pull the plaster off the lath - which causes it to sag and it can even and fall down​ especially with the help of a roof leak or rodent waste etc.

Now we have a crappy ceiling and we need to fix it.

Cracked kitchen ceiling

A) You can tear down the ceiling to the joists and use 1/2" or 5/8" drywall​

B) You can put drywall over the lath and plaster ​

I chose option B because it produces less waste than A and you really won't notice the 3/4" difference that you gain from removing the lath and plaster.​

I put 1/2" drywall on the ceiling in many of the rooms that don't have beam ceilings. I used 2" screws to get through the drywall and lath&plaster to the joists. Rooms with flat ceilings:

-kitchen, done

-laundry

-hall between laundry and lower bath

-lower bath, done  

-entry room, done

-hall from entry to music room

I have been trying to get all these done because sanding is dusty and gets everywhere. 

In the kitchen I put up 1/2" drywall on the flat part and 1/4" on the slanted part because it's curved. 

1/4" drywall is bendy and used for rounded applications like the curved area between the beams. Pictured is mesh tape and some joint compound

Usually 1/2" drywall takes 1&1/4" screws but since we have to go through 5/8-3/4" of plaster, we need 2" screws. The pieces have an edge meant to take mesh tape. The mesh tape keeps the joint compound between the sheets from cracking. The joint compound is the hard, plaster like substance that holds the sheets together. 

Second or third coat

The joint compound is structural and dries relatively quickly so can used to fill in large gaps as if it was plaster. You use this to get the general shape of the wall too.  You generally use an 8" taping blade to apply the joint compound.

After joint compound, topping compound is softer and easier to sand so it is used for a finish coat. It is soft and wet and can made quite smooth (with a 12" blade usually).

Topping compound helps me make it smooth. 

In general, joint compound is: 

-quicker drying

-structural

 -harder to sand

-used for the 1st coat

Topping is: 

-slower drying (because it's wet for spreadability) 

-non-structural/aesthetic

-easier to sand

-used for the last coat

I usually do more than two coats because it's easier for reasons you would know if you've done it. It's easier to get a rough shape and even it with a larger blade over many coats than to do a really good job in two coats.

After doing some nice coats, usually 1 or two joint compound and one or two topping compound, you have to sand. Make sure to wait until each coat dries before adding the next or it will crack. You can speed this by doing only two really nice coats and using heaters to help dry. That's how the pros cut it down to: 

Day 1: cut pieces and put up

Day 2: tape and joint compound, space heaters overnight

Day 3: topping coat, heaters

Day 4: sand  

After sanding, prime with PVA (thin, watery drywall primer/sealer) unless it's a kitchen or bath, then I like to use Zinser 1-2-3 primer which is thicker and goopier and more durable for water exposure and cleaning. The problem with the thicker paint is brush strokes are more apparent which is why PVA is better for non wet rooms like bedroom, living room or garage.

Welding a modern chandelier for the M Bedroom

The master bedroom has a comically small light fixture. 

When looking at chandeliers, I came across this light, which I thought would look good in the long master bedroom.

It was on Craigslist for $500 NIB from Restoration Hardware. Uhh no. I have a welder and know how to wire a lamp. It's on! 

Made some designs. 

Got some 1/2" square tube. 

I decided I wanted it to be 18"x4' for some reason. 4' long and 4' tall seemed the right max size for the room. 18x48 inches would be 1.5'x4 or 3:8 ratio. Is that a good aesthetic ratio? We'll see:

Laying out. 

Nice ratio

This is a bad weld. It's sitting on top. You want better penetration.

I am NOT a good welder. But that's what the grinder is for. 

You can see the line between the pieces where the weld can break again

Here's my lil welder setup. It's a Lincoln 125A "pro-sumer" welder with .035 flux core and the option to add gas. Mask is auto darkening from Harbor Freight. $40 but soo cool. 

Even with my little easy welder, it's still hard to get it a good weld. The two knobs are simply amps and wire speed. There's a chart under the side flap of the welder that tells you what settings to use. It says flux core .035 should be set to current B and wire speed 1. That's low current and slow wire speed. You want the current and speed settings so that it makes a bead that melts into the metal a bit. 

It's been a lot of trial and error, mainly due to crappy welds - they have to be ground down and then some crack and have to be re-welded and re-ground etc.  

I want to hide the wire in the fixture. It's going to be hard to fish it through  

This galvanized eyelet fit into the steel tubing nicely

It's taking shape

It's pretty difficult to drill this material so I marked out the holes with a utility knife buy scratching an X so that the countersink bit would have something to sit into and start in the right place.

I added some decorative wires to echo the shape of the ceiling  

It's coming along but certainly not going easy. It's been pretty hard to thread the holes for the "lamp nipples" with a tap (tapered thread cutter). Fortunately none of this needs to be super strong. 

I started trying to fish the "lamp cord" 16-2 wire through. I thought it would simply want to bend and turn the corner if I pushed it but it was too limp. Then I tried to push bailing wire through the same way but it also was too limp. Christina suggested I get some pull chain because it would feed by gravity. She was right.

I got several feet of heavy pull chain and put the fixture at a 45 degree angle to gravity feed the chain down. Once I got the chain down, I tied the baling wire to it and pulled that through

Now that I have the baling wire through, I need to get the lamp cord through. 

Taping the lamp cord to the bailing wire. First try

First try taping the bailing wire to the lamp cord was a failure. I had to start back with the pull chain.

Second try with a lot more tape

Second try was a success! 

Raising the shower head, tile layout, and expensive grouts explained

As you can see below, the original downstairs bath tile is quite lovely. I want to preserve the original design, while adding subtle improvements. I talked about adding LED cans earlier (link). Since I'm 6'4", I wanted to raise the shower head which is currently chest height. 

The hole middle bottom is the original height. The mark near the top is where I want the new one to go. 

I carefully extracted the rusty old galvanized pipes when doing the copper plumbing and reused the cool old brass valves. 

I added some brown aluminum flashing to direct the water over the redwood trim and not into the wall behind the tile. 

After adding some cement board for the wall, it looks like I'm going to need to add some mortar to straighten the surface

Here is a confusing diagram of how I'm trying to do the obvious - make the tile even

Evening out to make it so the finished tile looks continuous with the old tile

more straightening  

This is what you call a story stick: you mark out the grout lines on a piece of lathe so you can easily hold it up to the wall and compare layouts. 

Most of the work is setup and layout. The actual tiling goes pretty quick. 

You need a logic to do the layout. In the above pic, I used a standard rule - if the tile is in a running bond pattern, with an accent strip, you typically continue the running bond past the accent strip as if it wasn't there. In the above pic, imagine the area with the jade colored tile to the redwood trim deleted and you can see the running bond pattern is simply "interrupted" by the accent strip. But since I want to use a 1/8" grout line to minimize visual impact, the different 6" tiles top and bottom can't line up. So I centered it on the center line of the tile that dies into the soap dish.

Here's a tricky little piece  

More layout planning

I used my story stick to plan the adjacent wall layout, above. This is a tricky one because the center line is blurred - the middle of the shower valves does not line up with the accent tile, and neither of those line up with the shower head. I'll just pick what looks the best using a bit of logic from before since there is no obvious "correct" layout. 

This option starts with a long edge bullnose 3x6 which looks good along the right side. 

That results in this appearance in the middle. The middle white tile lines up with the middle tile between the shower valves. The accent strip looks a little weird but 2/3 is the best we can do. 

Another aspect of layout you should consider is where the cuts will occur. Having a small piece on the side is fine if you have a plumb wall. If you don't, these pieces will emphise the crookedness of your wall

This is a bullnose corner. Home Depot has regular 6x6 white dal tile and bullnose in stock but not 3x6 long edge bullnose. You might be starting to notice that having an ideal layout requires LOTS of planning. I think it took about a week to get the special order tiles. 

Tile is set  

Now I wait for mortar to set and then grout... 

LOOKS AWESOME!!! 

I used this expensive grout. 

I used expensive white grout. Traditional grout is water permeable. That means bacteria and mold can get into your grout because they have water and food - your body oils and dead skin. 

Traditionally this was prevented with a tile sealer, which is basically a fine oil clearcoat. The oil finish is soaked up by the grout (and stone surface of natural stone tiles) and repels water, directing it down to the drain. You want the tiles, thin-set mortar and grout bone dry or the water behind the tiles will create hairline cracks when it escapes and the materials contract.

Over time, cracking is inevitable because of the expansion and contraction of materials by the changing of temperature and moisture of day and night and through the seasons. Oil finishes have some ability to stretch, but over time they become very tight and hard as they change in chemistry and eventually like sap they become brittle too. 

If you are diligent about keeping your bathroom clean and sealing the grout every 10-15 years, you can avoid complete failure for a century. It is inevitable. However the ubiquitous use of bath fans in modern times has helped moderate changes in moisture. I think every bathroom should have a fan for moisture and odor.

Modern materials have come to the rescue to solve this age old problem. Grouts resembling plastic in texture in cured form have come onto the market which are extremely durable and water repellent throughout. First of this kind was epoxy grout, which is very effective but a sticky mess to install. Everything used to wipe it up essentially has to be thrown away.

The cool new thing is urethane grout. Like urethane or acrylic paint, it is water soluble until it cures, then it is as durable or better than oil paint. I'm a big fan of Zinser BULLSEYE 1-2-3 primer for its amazing sealing and priming properties. This "Fusion Pro - Single Component Grout" is very similar in smell and physical characteristics to the Zinser primer but thicker with lots of sand thrown in. The Fusion Pro grout could possibly be a Zinser primer type product with sand thrown in for texture. The Fusion grout at $55 for a gallon is expensive - enough for a tub to ceiling 4x4 tile 3-wall surround - but worth it's money if it outlasts a small bag of traditional grout at $15 for even 5 years. I wonder how Zinser at $20 something for a single gallon with fine sand added would perform. If it matched the performance of the Fusion grout - hey you could make $25/gal just by pouring sand into paint! There's a money making idea!

Looks like I'm rambling again. The short story is if you want white grout, which I think is beautiful looking, you should probably spend money on fancy urethane type grout. 

Kitchen Sub Panel Pt.2 - wiring circuits

Starting to pull some wires and wire up the sub panel circuits. 

It's good to keep it tidy because there are going to be a lot of wires in there.  

Did some rearranging... not written down is I decided to throw the laundry outlet on this sub panel. "C outs is the required 2 countertop circuits" fit into a single space (they sell two 20A (and other amperages) breakers that fit into one typical space). "Disp" is for the under sink outlet used for the in sink disposal. 

If you have a dishwasher and a sink disposal, you put two circuits on one outlet! I told you there are a lot of circuits! You get to break these little tabs on the outlet that connect them together. It's a very special experience which is most commonly done for this exact application. Also done for switched outlets used for lamps but that's pretty rare these days. This house has quite a few of them.

If I had room for a dishwasher, I would be averaging one outlet per circuit - I have one counter circuit that has two outlets. Seems crazy but I think the reason for that is the modern American Dream is to have your kitchen remodeled every 10-20 years so the sub panel makes this easy.

This panel is wired

Tested and labeled circuits

Sub panel is done! I double checked each circuit with a beeper before labeling. The black plastic hole cover is only needed if you accidentally break out more grey metal tabs than you need to.