On The Seventh Day They Rested

I haven’t picked up the tools since last November when I supplemented my Cornell teaching income by remodeling a bathroom. Well, yet again, before beginning a year of teaching and directing at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, I teamed up with my pal T and knocked out a bathroom for a fellow thespian in Catskill New York.



The existing bathroom was a dark and dingy affair, lacking a window and employing a wall at the head of the old tub that blocked light from nearly half the bathroom. We removed the wall, the tub, the linoleum floor, and some nasty plastic wall covering.





The water lines for the tub were coming straight up through the floor into the wall that we removed and the drain was in the wrong place for the corner shower unit that we were to install. As fate would have it, the wall that we wanted to bring the water lines through had brick in it, a hold over from and earlier remodel. The joists in the floor were also running the wrong way and had to be notched in order to accept the new drain line.

Day three was the killer. All the demo was done and we had prepared space and pathways for the water lines and the drain. Out came the copper, the PVC and the torch. By the end of the day my best work was ready to be covered up and never seen again by floors and walls. It’s always a nail-biter when you’ve spent so much time sweating joints and you turn on the water. The expectation is that something will leak. Not one.

The rest was wall-board, plastering, tiling, carpentry, and the installation of fixtures. Because this is an old house (how about 1840!) we had to square up the end wall in order to have a chance to get the corner shower unit actually into a corner that resembled a corner.

And on the seventh day we had beers (we had beers every day but they didn’t taste nearly as good) and packed up.




I’d like to get out of the bathroom. How about some kitchens, or offices or a hand crafted bar and game room. Anybody??