Shower door project

This is what my shower has looked like for the past 3 weeks or so, ever since Renae discovered that water from the shower was leaking into the basement.

I had taken the door off of the frame when I was tracking down the leak.  I had assumed that the door was improperly hung and that a simple adjustment would take care of water that was getting under the bottom of the door.

After talking to one of the employees in the Bath department at Lowe's, I learned that actually the door had been installed correctly. The real problem was that the door was not the right type of door to use in that shower.  The shower head is opposite the door, and the pivot style door is designed to be used with a shower having the shower head on a side wall.

Because the pivot style doors are prone to letting water get through and there was going to be little hope of fashioning a decent fix, we decided to order a new door.  We had always planned on replacing this shower door, since the door frame has a horizontal bar that you have to duck under going in and out of the shower. We thought it was going to be a project a few years down the road, though. But two weeks after placing the order, I had the new door in the back of the car.

Getting the frame off was pretty easy. I pulled the screws holding it together and gently pried the frame away from the tile. The silicone caulk held it pretty tightly in place, but I was able to get it off without scratching the tile.

The bottom part of the frame had about half a tube of caulk which was still wet underneath it!  I took a photo of it:

I guess whoever installed it just squirted a ton of caulk through the pivot hole and figured it would dry eventually. Not so much, in this case. It does explain why there was a thin sheet of dry silicone covering the entire part of the inner door ledge, however. 

Four hours later, and I have my new door installed:

Really it only took about an hour of measuring, drilling, leveling and fastening.  The other three hours were spent going back down to the workshop to hunt down a tool I didn't think I would need, but found that I really did need.

Here's what I learned doing this project:

• Get all the tools that the instructions call for.
• Read the instructions twice before starting the project.  I read through them once and it didn't make any sense.  The second time through I started figuring it out.  (Actually, reading the instructions is the number one thing that I've learned from every contractor I've ever worked with.)
• Covering the drain with a towel like Rich on "This Old House" does is a smart idea(r). 
• Use the proper drill bit for the material you are drilling through.  I used a masonry bit to get through the tile. The previous homeowner (probably) did not and ended up chipping the tile up pretty good.  I tried to hang the door to cover the old holes as much as possible, but ended up sacrificing a bit of evenness from one side to the other to cover some of the holes. Not content to learn from someone else's mistake, I used the wrong type of drill bit to try to drill through the metal door jamb. I ended up destroying a drill bit in the process. (And having to make another trip to the workshop.)
• You can use the cardboard that the door came in to clean up your mess.  All the parts of the other door went onto that box, which I dragged out to the garage.

This was a simple project for the average DIYer.  I think we have really improved the look and functionality of our master bathroom with the new shower door.

Leaky drain!

Last week, Renae discovered that our kitchen sink drain had sprung a leak.  It was a slow leak and she mopped up the mess, put a bowl down to catch the leak, and we mostly stopped using that side of the sink for a couple of days.  After a few days I had enough time at night to tackle the problem.

The above photo is what the drain looked like before I started. Note the black smear around the joint right above the trap coming out of the garbage disposal.  That's where the leak was coming from.

I tried just tightening the joint by twisting the "nut" part, but it didn't help.  Then, I removed the trap and the piece above it, so I could get a better look.  (The top white piece is a 90 degree turn which connects to the galvanized pipe.  It was not leaking so I didn't want to touch it, if possible.)

The problem was that the extension piece which connected the trap to the 90 degree piece had been incorrectly installed.  The straight piece had been cut and the end of the trap it was connected to was not designed to allow a straight piece to connect to it.  The trap is designed for a 90 degree piece to be connected to it with a long end on it to go directly to the house drain.  But, in our kitchen the drain pipes were too high to do that. So I can't blame the previous home-owner for putting in the extension.

What I can blame him for was how he tried to make the joint watertight.  There was a thin bead of caulk used to "seal" the pipe.   I'm no plumbing expert, but I'm pretty sure that is not a recommended use for caulk.

I went to the home center and stared at the wall of drain fittings for a good half hour.  This type of fitting is called a "slip joint".  It is really simple to assemble and disassemble (for cleaning the trap if needed).  But the fittings only go together in certain ways.  Finally, I was able to use a flexible (bendy) tube to make it work.

The photo didn't turn out as well, but hopefully you can see I went from the trap (which is now turned out toward the camera in this photo) to a 90 degree fitting (as the trap is designed) to the flexible pipe to the 90 degree fitting which connects to the galvanized drain pipe.

So far, no leaks.

Leveling a shelf

I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the shelf on the wall in the dining room area was a little slanted. It was so slanted that vases sitting on it slid off the shelf when I accidentally bumped the shelf as I was clearing off the table.

This is one of the floating shelves that Ikea makes. It was there when we moved in. We don't exactly love the shelf, but we don't have anything better for the wall right now, so we're using it.

I took off the shelf by loosening screws on the bottom holding it to the bracket.

The picture quality is pretty poor, but I think you can see that the bracket was not well secured to the wall.  Drywall anchors had been used, but only two screws on each side were holding it up, and both of the top screws were not tight to the wall.

I marked the spot for two more screws. Then I took the shelf down, drilled holes in the drywall, and popped in two more drywall anchors.  I think that the shelf is now better secured to the wall and more level than before.