I Have An Apprentice For Two Days!

But yesterday, I had a helper/apprentice working with me. This is a young man in his early 20s from my church who is also in my Wednesday night church group. He’s a student at the local trade school where he’s studying avionic electronics (I think I got that right 😀 ). And while he’s going to school, he’s also working. He mentioned Wednesday night that at his job, he was handed a caulk gun, but he had never used a caulk gun before, so he didn’t know how to use it. Someone said, “Well, you should have called Kristi!” I jokingly said, “Yes! I can hold a seminar on caulk guns and you can come.” He said, “I should get your phone number and come work with you sometime.”

I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not, but as I was leaving, he asked for my phone number, and then he actually came over yesterday and worked with me on the storage room from 3:00pm until 8:00pm! And it was SO FUN! And what I loved is that it was very much a give and take for both of us. He’s a young, strong guy, so did a lot (or most) of the heavy lifting and gave my tired, much weaker body a break. He carried out all of the heavy contractor bags filled with tile and concrete board that I had removed from the walls. And I walked him through using a circular saw, setting the depth gauge on the saw, how to start a cut with a circular saw in the middle of a floor as opposed to starting on the edge of a piece of plywood, etc.

We got all of the tile, concrete board, and drywall that filled up the tub bagged and removed, and then I showed him what holds a bathtub in place and how to remove those things so that a bathtub can be taken out. And of course, he was incredibly helpful in actually getting the tub pulled out and taken outside.

And then we marked and measured where the floor joists are (or should be) so that we could cut a large enough hole in the floor so that I could look underneath and see if I could determine where the scuttle hole to the crawl space needs to go. I had forgotten that this bathroom actually has two subfloors in some areas, so I was able to explain to him the difference between how we do subfloors today in bathrooms as opposed to how they did subfloors in bathrooms back in the late 40s and early 50s.

Back then, they put the subfloor between the floor joists in bathrooms, with the short subfloor boards sitting on stringers that are nailed to the sides of the floor joists, so that top of the subfloor and the top edge of the floor joists were flush with each other. That gave them an extra 3/4″ of space for that super thick bed of mortar (or concrete) that they used to use to install floor tile on bathroom floors. Whereas today, we put the plywod subfloor on top of the floor joists, and then put concrete board over the subfloor, and then install tile with a much thinner layer of mortar.

So after I was able to satisfy my curiosity and look under the house to determine where the scuttle hole needed to go (which, unfortunately, is just inside the storage room door, so it will definitely be front-and-center), I covered the hole with a piece of plywood and we got started on the ceiling drywall. Since he wanted the experience, I let him do the hardest part and take down the section that had the tile on it that was above the bathtub. He had a little trouble with it, especially around that vent, so he asked for my input on how to go about it, I gave him some pointers, and he got it done!

While he was doing the tiled section, I was working on removing the rest of the ceiling drywall. I uncovered all kind of junk up there that I should have removed the first time I did this bathroom remodel. But I remember being so scared about having to remove the ceiling drywall back then (I used to be so scared of that attic), so I’m sure I just wanted to get the ceiling covered as quickly as possible. This time around, I’ll take some time to remove all of this junk (very old batt insulation, random pieces of plywood and wood, old wiring that isn’t connected to anything) before the new drywall goes up.

When we stopped working at 8:00 last night, the room looked like a complete mess, but we had made some great progress.

It still has to get a little bit worse before it starts getting better.

The last two remaining things that need to happen before the plumber gets here next Tuesday is the concrete board and subfloor need to come up, and the wiring for the outlets, switches, and lights need to be rerouted to their new locations for the storage room.

I’m hoping we can get most of that done today, and then I’ll just need to wait for the plumber to come on Tuesday.

Once the plumber is finished, the room will be ready for rebuild — new subfloor, new flooring, and new drywall.