It’s been a long month of rough-in work on the house. The plumber, the HVAC contractor, the electrician and my contractor have all been here.
The electrician rewired the existing second floor. There was a time during the middle of the last century when electricians ran their pipe through the floor. The subfloor in these mid-century homes were built from 3/4″ x 7-1/4″ planks:
I am standing in the utility room looking up at the subfloor planking. At the end of the day, the contractors sweep up all the sawdust they created, and much of it falls between those cracks. I have learned not to leave clean laundry in the room!
Above the subfloor, 3/4″ x 1-1/2″ ‘sleepers’ run perpendicular to the subfloor planks. The finished hardwood rests on top of those sleepers:
In the space between the finished floor and the subfloor is a chase that is a perfect size for electrical pipe. There is no issue with the pipe staying there if the floor is undisturbed. If you are renovating a mid-century home in Chicago, just beware, you most likely have live electrical wires running below your hardwood floor!
Because we are rearranging the layout of the rooms on our second floor and changing floor material in the new bath and laundry, the pipes had to be relocated to a safer location. In our case, the electric pipes for the whole second floor come up from the panel box in the utility room at the south sideof the house, the side we are renovating. Running the electric in the floor is convenient because the pipe can run the shortest distance from the south end to any other location on the second floor. Moving them into walls and out-of-the-way of new construction created much longer runs to the rooms on the north side of the house where we are currently living. So, new longer wire needed to be pulled to each of the outlets, and junction boxes on the north side of the house.
Bill spent several days just rewiring the second floor, pulling new wire up from the panel box to existing outlets. And when John came home at the end of the day, he experienced the disappointment I warned him about. It looked like nothing had been done!
We have vent pipes, drain pipes, and new copper water pipes. We discovered we have a small fortune in copper when the back of the second floor bath wall was exposed. Not only the water lines are copper, but so are the drains and vents. When I asked the plumber what it would take to switch out the copper drains and vents for plastic, he thought it would take a small fortune. Copper is not the best material for drains and vents, however, mine seem to be in good shape, so they are staying.
The view of the water wall in the second floor hall bath.
We are waiting for inspection of the “rough” plumbing, electrical and mechanical. Once we are given the okay to proceed, we can insulate this remodeled space!
Steve was here yesterday to run the duct to vent the dryer in my new future laundry room on the second floor.
I have planning a new laundry room since the day we moved into this house almost 15 years ago. Allow me to remind you that my mother wanted to enter my space in the utility room in an “Ugliest Laundry Room” contest. Once we took the jump to embrace this massive renovation, I have been tweaking the design of the Laundry Room. I had to commit to one of at least a dozen variations on a theme a month ago when the plumbers were standing in the room with copper pipe in hand asking me where the washer and dryer were going. I boldly marked out the exact location of the dryer, the washing machine and the sink on the floor. I was all in.
The water wall has been finished for at least two weeks now.
The laundry room will be 8′-0″ wide. When we added a bathroom to the design, I somewhat reluctantly gave up 2 feet in width for more space in the other room for the bathroom. I sharpened my virtual pencil, and measured, and taped out designs on the floor to make sure I had enough floor space to comfortably work in front of the dryer when I was unloading it. I found I needed a 4′ clear space in front of the dryer. If we kept the dryer vent close to the wall with only one elbow, and steal a few inches from my yet to be designed linen cabinet, we could make it!
So when Steve arrived yesterday he came to me right away to talk about how we were going to get the vent outside. He feels very strongly that the vent cannot go straight up through the roof with our midwest potential for great amounts of snow. Ideally he could take it straight up and out the back of the west wall, just below the soffit. Perfect, except the vent would be about 7 feet away from our operable skylight in the kitchen, and just a few feet down. We do open that skylight window when the temperature is above 60. We decided, too close, and probably would not pass code. So out the wall just below the soffit on the south side was the next best choice. However, the vent would need to run perpendicular to the ceiling joists. If you look closely in the photo above, my first concession of the day was to work with a soffit I did not plan on. It’s okay, it’s just a laundry room.
About an hour later he tapped my shoulder and asked me to follow him upstairs. “I can’t get the 4 inch duct into the wall where you want it”, he explained. “There is blocking in the wall that is supporting the range hood in the kitchen below.” You can see the two open stud spaces with said blocking. He continued by throwing the electrician under the bus, “and Bill’s pipe is in the middle of the stud space we want to use.”
He offered two options:
- we could move the vent to the next bay, but that would require another bend in the duct, pushing the dryer out another 4″ into the room, as well as cutting dangerously into the already shortened length of duct required by the manufacturer for venting.
- we could put the duct where we wanted it, but partially projecting into the room. He could build a chase around it to hide it. This would push us 2-1/2″ into the room.
How could this be happening to me? I thought I had crossed all my t’s and dotted all my i’s. I had already moved into that room and was folding clothes in my mind in front of the new window. I could have chosen to layout this space however I wanted and I chose the one place I could not put the dryer. I rejected the first option, I need every inch of floor space. The second would give me a weird break in the wall. If you look at my design above, you will see an open space behind the washer & dryer that will be left open and tiled so I can hang laundry to dry as I take it out of the washing machine or dryer. How did we not discuss this earlier, before the electrician and the plumber had bent and sweat all their parts and pieces into place? It’s too late to furr out the whole wall without pulling all the plumbing and electrical forward 2″.
Steve could sense my distressand worked to find another option. Together we worked out an acceptable solution. He did move the duct to the next bay as you can see. I am planning on moving the washer and dryer to the right 12″. I lose the tall cabinet at the wall, and I will make adjustments to the sink cabinet…it will be 12″ wider. And most important, I still have my 4 feet of floor space! It’s just a laundry room, afterall. It is going to be blue!
A Dream Under Construction 