Above 1200 Sq/FT From Urban Pie Factory To Mountain Barn

[Nolift911]

Snow

Hello from a snowbank.



For folks and followers who have glanced at the news, you might’ve seen headlines about the deaths of nine people in an avalanche near Truckee this week. It’s a small town, and nearly everyone is only a degree removed from the tragedy. One of the local ski mountains recorded 97 inches in the last 48 hours. I have 47” on my porch. Hearts are heavy, traffic is heavy, the snow is heavy.

I went to Palisades yesterday after dropping the kid off at school. Even with full avalanche gear and an airbag, I wasn’t confident in the conditions. Half of the people who made it to the mountains are locals frothing at the mouth for powder and steep runs. One aggressive turn is enough to release the hill. The other half are tourists enjoying ski week vacation who have no business deal dealing with that much snow. In the space of three runs I witnessed a small avalanche, did a beacon search alongside ski patrol, and dug a 12-year-old out of a tree well he had fallen into head first. He was lucky.

I left after only 90 minutes, spooked, humbled, and sad. After nearly a half dozen trips in many countries, and skiing out of snow cats and helicopters, fear and perspective have caught up with me. A couple good turns aren’t worth dying for.

I found other ways to get my kicks and a small dose of adrenaline, and share the experience with loved ones.



Be safe, be well, and give those people who are close to you a big hug.

First off not sure how this "watched" thread fell off my radar - GJ what is up with that???

I follow the American Avalanche Association on the Gram - and obviously all over the news. Tragic for all involved.

I do think you hit the nail on the head. Snow in the Sierras and Tahoe area are just on a whole other level in the US. Stuff that most folks, even seasoned skiers and back country folks cannot understand. I have been there on multiple occasions when it was dumping at the resorts and backcountry - even something as innocent as snowshoeing at a lower elevation and it is humbling as you say. I have been snowed in and stuck in Tahoe many times due to unsafe avi conditions on 89 and even got caught in one, the car in front disappeared before my eyes and once I figured out what was going on and I reversed as quickly as possible - only to get blocked by tourons out of their car watching in amazement. Incredible.

My fear is while winter continues in places like Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado and the storms start to hit on top of the crusty thin layer from the snow drought thus far - more accidents will happen.

Anyway - love the RZR looks like an acceptable solution until conditions improve. Stay safe. Enjoy.

 

[RyanE]

I left after only 90 minutes, spooked, humbled, and sad. After nearly a half dozen trips in many countries, and skiing out of snow cats and helicopters, fear and perspective have caught up with me. A couple good turns aren’t worth dying for.

Long time lurker here, I've been following your thread for many years.

This is such an important takeaway for many of us who enjoy the backcountry and live in mountain communities. The call/pull to enjoy it can be so strong at times.

For me, it was watching the search for victims of an avalanche (Avalanche) one afternoon from my office window on an absolutely bluebird day for it to really sink in.

Stay safe out there. Thanks for sharing your journey with us.

 

[rzims]

I'm about an hour down the hill from you at 3000ft and we got almost 2ft of snow here.
I spent Friday removing trees and clearing roads alongside all the other departments, the county and PGE trying to help get access to a couple of neighborhoods near us.
I've snowshoed and backcountry skied up around Castle Peak and that whole area is no joke. Some steep sidehills even on the main trails. A very sad event last week....and you're right to choose the safe alternative. It's just not worth it

 

[jake28]

Holy holes

I was doing my best to ensure that this thread did not evolve into a list of “Questionable Facebook marketplace purchases.”

But then I actually got a decent deal on a big yellow drill press. It was classic story of somebody retiring/moving/getting out of the hobby. I stumbled on a big Powermatic floor. Stand drill press for a very reasonable number. My south bend lathe and Bridgeport, and a delta drill Press in in San Francisco, are all World War II era. They’re big and heavy, and have excellent reputations, but also well use and desperately in need of tuning, maintenance, and it doesn’t that I don’t have a time for at the moment. Sometimes getting something lightly used, and from the century is an appropriate approach. I just want to make some holes.




And since everything is better with googly eyes, I added googly eyes.



Luckily, the downstairs of my home is currently mostly destroyed and in the process of getting rebuilt, so I’ll have more meaningful updates.

 

[M.Brane]

LOL at the googly eyes.

I'm sure you know the mantra here: more tools is good tools.

 

[Old Man Roger]

That’ll make holes.

 

[zanyad]

That’ll make holes.

 

[Old Man Roger]

That’s dirty talk.lol

 

[jake28]

A (more) proper project.

Apparently it’s spring verging on summer now. 80 degrees today, snow melting, rivers rushing, and a bevy of projects to get done.

Started the day with an impromptu call from my in laws, they were administering vaccines, banding, and branding their herd of angus cows. So, did cowboy stuff and got dirty this morning, made slightly more complicated and stressful with the whole family on tow.



To be clear, I was not roping anything. I was the reformed city slicker holding gates, and keeping my toddler from getting trampled. But it was a healthy morning of country living.

Mix a hefty cocktail of dust, sun, heat, stress, loud offspring in a cramped car, and I was eager to seek refuge in the shop as post-dinner break from family life.

Presenting, a nook. This will be going into a bathroom remodel that I’ll reveal shortly.





Basic construction, but got the details right
and kept the cuts accurate.
- Dominos for aligning the shelves,
- Kreg screws in the corners to skip clamping
- solid wood edge banding stuck on with titebond trim glue and lightly held with masking tape for a few minutes.
- 3/4” Douglas fir plywood left over from the entry way book case.
- 1/4” underpayment that is the same stuff I have on the ceiling of the shop.

I find that I’m enjoying going back to basics. 15 years after I started making sawdust with any regularity I’m pushing to plan better, commit to a cut list, limit the number of times I adjust the tablesaw fence and try to get into a groove and flow state. Tonight it paid off. I’m sure I’ll get back to my hack-prone habits shortly.

 

[Mr onetwo]

Douglas fir is such a nice looking wood...nice work.

 

[jake28]

A protracted bathroom addition

I just finished a lovely book about an English professor running a ranch in the Dakotas and his misadventures while switching his herd from cattle to bison. He describes building miles of fencing to withstand the forces and inclinations of buffalo, and shared a thought along the lines of “when you’re a rancher, you have to do everything, but often infrequently, and by the time you’re good and efficient at the task, the project is complete.

That is a decent synopsis of my predicament adding a bathroom to my home. For long time fans of my ramblings, you’ve born witness to nearly all of my building-scale construction experience. The Pie Factory in San Francisco I helped design, but didn’t swing a hammer until I was building the shop. For The Mountain Barn, I did the design and was hands on for everything between the slab and the roof, but really only at the apprentice level for framing, insulation, electrical, and plumbing. I usually had someone nearby coaching me through the finer points, and I outsourced things that would kill me or flood the shop, like the main panel and heating manifold.

So in early January, with minimal snow in the forecast, I started what I thought would be a few weekends of work, adding a bathroom in an underutilized room in the basement of my home. The house is on a slope so the downstairs is only a single room in between crawl spaces that contain the electrical and plumbing for the rest of the house. I thought that would make things easy. It almost did.


Step 1: Get architect friend to spend a morning measuring things and trading ideas.


Behind the TV there was a large closet which primarily served as access to the various crawlspaces and home to a bunk bed that came with the house. On one side was foundation stem wall. The opposing wall into the main room had some structural components, but it was hard to tell what or where without either x ray vision or the support of a claw hammer.


Step 2: ask, what would Ronald Reagan suggest?


Step 3: take out the flooring.

I struggle to get a sense of physical space and proportions from a drawing, so after taping out various rough layouts, it was easiest to work from a given set of constraints and then prototype in the space. There is a small sofa I want to use in a new nook, and I had rough minimum and comfortable dimensions for a shower, vanity, and toilet. These determined my length and width.


Step 4: take out a claw hammer, and a wall.
Taking down the wall felt both momentous and necessary. Maybe not like Berlin in the 90s, but close. It was a case of feeling suddenly committed to the project, and where my buddy was cranky at my hesitation and consternation and concerns with “well, what might be in the wall?” Two strikes with a hammer answered the question.

This would be one a dozen times where the angst and anxiety of not knowing what problems I might encounter (and associated expense) or what the solution might look like, were disproportionate with the actual issues. As I’ve come to now better appreciate: every hole can be patched, whether in concrete, drywall, or water pipe.



And like ripping off a bandaid or jumping in the pool, the results were far less severe than anticipated. I had feared finding plate steel worthy of Ft Knox since above the alcove is a stone fireplace. The mystery structural wall ended up being little more than some 4x6s and OSB sheathing. Then it was just vacuuming Sheetrock design and figuring out plumbing.

 

[larry4406]

Remodeling is always fun....

 

[bdbecker]

Remodeling is always fun....

Type 2 fun...

 

[zanyad]

every hole can be patched, whether in concrete, drywall, or water pipe.

 

[rvieceli]

Theres a saying making the rounds of the maker community on social media.

" The first two hours of a ten minute job are always the hardest."

Always been appropriate for me.

Ron

 

[nicholam77]

Nice job on the 'nook' cabinet. +1 that Douglas Fir looks great. Some may find them boring compared to other forms of woodworking, but personally I love building cabinets.

I fully sympathize with the anxiety of ripping out a wall and not fully knowing what's behind it. Your optimism on patching holes is greater than mine.

Very interested in this remodel and especially how you negotiate the plumbing!

Also side note — I like your basement. The white walls, wood trim, and cork flooring are very much my cup of tea.

 

[jake28]

Bathroom, continued.

A wise person, who probably resembled Mel Brooks, once offered sage advice: “**** never flows uphill.”

In my case, **** does not levitate its way into overhead drain pipes either.

The new bathroom drains were lower than the drain lines I needed to connect to. This presented a dilemma.

Enter, the grinder pump.


Before I started this project, I was not remotely familiar with the intricacies and mechanics of getting things to flow uphill. I have other hobbies. Luckily Alex is from New Hampshire and is very familiar with the options available for awkward, off grid, and improvised home infrastructure. My eyes glazed over as he doubted the virtues and deficiencies of cassette toilets, suction pumps, and grinder pumps. I told him to just order the thing.

The basic mechanics made sense: waste from sink and toilet and shower drain into the pump. It grinds. It pumps. Upwards. Lord willing I don't have to think about it ever again So I attached the spec sheet with my application to the permit office, fully expecting a rubber stamp and an encouraging email of approval. After several weeks I had received neither. Instead I got a notification that the health department wanted to chat. This news did not make me smile.

The health department was responding as if I was proposing adding a malarial swamp to my back yard.

The grinder pump that I had purchased was apparently not designed for septic systems, but works fine for homes connected to a sewer.

The health department employee, who thoroughly enjoyed getting to say “poop smoothie” as a technical term explained that that the grinder pump would expel a mixture that could theoretically tax my septic system. So I might need to extend my septic tanks, leech fields, leech lines, back up leech fields which is just space that I can’t build on in case my original leech field fails someday. And before I could even contemplate this, I had to find the original septic system designs from 2000. So I had to submit a form to the building department akin to a freedom of information act request. And while I waited for the original drawings, I got a hold of a septic planner. They told me that I should hire a surveyor to get a formal property map done to ensure that my effluence or hypothetical future effluence would not encroach on somebody else’s land. And if I was lucky, I would have the opportunity to hire an excavator, dig up my existing system, and connect to it. If I passed the percolation tests.

Feeling like I was trapped in a Monty Python skit, I was on the verge of scrapping the project entirely and renting a port-a-john.

Tech employees love to sing the virtues of first principles problem-solving. I’ve always understood it to mean cutting through assumptions to get to anunderlying problem or challenge. The phrases ranks along side “strategic thinker” and “head of ideation” in meaningless corporate jargon, but it is relevant here. I finally got to the heart of the matter: the issue was the poop smoothie not the poop.

After some phone tag, I got a hold of the same friendly health department employee, and asked very simply: “what if I use a pump that doesn’t grind?” After a brief pause, probably because she was trying to fit “poop smoothie” into the response, she said simply “yep, that wouldn’t be a problem at all.”

One Google search and the $500 pump later I was back in the running. This was one of a dozen examples where I realized that often the value of hiring a professional is paying not only for the experience, but incredibly arcane knowledge that I was perfectly happy not to possess. Gluing pipes together is not difficult. Pulling the trigger on a pro press tool is not hard. Sneaking romex through a tiny hole can be done with an audiobook playing in the background. But there may be virtue in hiring somebody who knows the difference between the effects of poop and a poop smoothie.

And when the inspector arrived to examine my DIY handiwork and appreciate the presence of the appropriate pump, he did not give a single ****.

 

[loganb]

Well done in defeating the red tape brigade with the difference of poop vs poop smoothie....I shall attempt to remember similar nuances in my battles with administrative demon hordes!

 

[BuyMyGarage]

Im looking at similar work, what model pump did you end up with?

 

[Old Man Roger]

And when the inspector arrived to examine my DIY handiwork and appreciate the presence of the appropriate pump, he did not give a single ****

I feel it would've been appropriate if he had though.lol

 

[gearhead1960]

Why couldn’t the damn permit reviewer point out you spec’d the wrong pump and make your life easier by sharing that knowledge with you? Perfect example of the “Peter Principle”!

 

[jake28]

Im looking at similar work, what model pump did you end up with?

Will double check but I think this was the replacement pump. The key is an “effluent” pump vs a grinder pump. Mine has to fit inside the Liberty basin I had already purchased and installed.

 

[larry4406]

In my area, we use the term "ejector pump" to describe what you are now using.

Quite common for basements to be below the sewer main/lateral and thus cannot gravity sewer.

My house has what is called a hung sewer. First floor gravity sewers. I have an ejector crock with pump in the basement to pump the basement bath upwards about 8' to connect to the hung sewer.

Liberty is a decent pump. I put a Zoeller M267-H in mine.

These units require a check valve on the discharge. I encourage you to consider Zoeller's The Quite Check Valve. Typical check valves for these systems result in a loud bang when the pump shuts off due to water hammer. The Quite Check Valve is literally silent. We use this exclusively in our new homes when a hung sewer is in play. Make sure your discharge piping is rigidly strapped.

You will need to vent the crock.

 

[PugetDude]

Jake, I just finished installing a Saniflo macerator in my new shop bathroom. Works great, pumps about 10' vertically and 40' horizontally into the closest vent/drain stack. I was able to hide the pump in an adjacent closet.

Install was much easier than the Liberty grinder pump in a vault. Only other option would have been breaking up finished slabs and trenching across a paver driveway and sidewalks to get to the grinder pump on the other end of the house.

 

[Grant Gunderson]

@loganb @Nolift911 thank you for the good wishes and everybody else following along.

To the surprise of nobody who has been through this before, the needs of little people consumed my aspirations, free time, and projects. In spite of an exceedingly accommodating wife and a very patient dog, the progeny demand basic things like food, sleep, and emotional support, apparently.

Here and there I’ve gotten to fiddle in the shop and well beyond. As a taste, I bring you fire.

I’ve always wanted a wood-fired stove in my wood shop. It’s always seemed natural, appropriate, efficient, and effective. Hell, even of historical significance.

For reasons that are hard to discern, a hole appeared in the roof. The obvious solution seem to be a chimney with a little hat on top. And a lot of sealant. Now nearby sticks and project off cuts go up in smoke and all I can do is smile.

Maybe I missed it, but what are the long led strip lights you used here? How is the light output (brightness) of them?

 

[jake28]

I made these with parts pieces together online. The LED strips and drivers are from WAC. Readily available. The driver allows you to adjust the color temp. For all around work they are more than adequate. The only time I find myself needing more light is for close up technical work like welding.

 

[jake28]

Tile Time

In the Time Machine that is this thread, tile will catch us up to today. Tile installation is a shiny new area for me. With a couple tips and novel brands like Schulter / Kerdi to check out, I started putting together the requisite parts and materials.


Warm and fuzzy. And itchy. Home Depot was out of 3.5” rockwool so went with conventional fiberglass. Not my favorite stuff to work with. But my insulation skills have gotten a lot better since the shop.


Kerdi board to the rescue. Eye-wateringly expensive but smooth and stable and has a nice grid line to follow when laying tile. I followed the instructions to the letter.

And then I had a had a buddy who helped me do the shop interior do the shower pan and float the floor and inch.

I want a curbless shower for stubbed toes and to avoid adding tripping hazards to the house. Which in a remodel is a pain. And their is a soffit in a portion of the bathroom that drops the ceiling height to within an inch of the legal minimum.

Kerdi makes a premade shower pan, that would have worked beautifully, but it wouldn’t have left me with the required ceiling height. So I opted to do a custom shower pan.

Got all the materials, left buddy to spend a morning mixing and pouring, and I went on a ski date with wife and kiddos to enjoy the last few inches of snow that are sticking to the ski runs in 60-degree weather.

When I got home the new slab was looking clean and smooth and happy.


And just before bed it looked like this. Deep structural cracks. I’m no engineer, but it’s not ideal. Turns out buddy had done tile and cement, but never had done a mortar bed. He mixed the mortar wet, like concrete, and then put it down to cure. My running hypothesis is that the excess of water combined with the existing slab meant it dried very quickly, and the water evaporating left space for the aggregate to move and for the mix to crack.

So I went to Reddit for advice from tile ‘pros’ and got 30 different opinions ranging from “don’t sweat it” to “the earth will stop spinning you even look at the cracks and your shower will leak and your house will fall and a thousand years of plagues will befall your children if you don’t rip it out immediately.”


So I made use of my handy sidewalk ice scraper and had the newly-installed 1” slab out in just a few minutes. It hadn’t adhered to the existing slab at all. Lessons learned. This is the state of bathroom this morning.

So, to the fine followers of my follies, I’m actively soliciting recommendations for what to put down to raise my floor. And any other tile tips.

 

[bdbecker]

...I finally got to the heart of the matter: the issue was the poop smoothie not the poop...

Like I said, Type 2 fun...

 

[kj_mustang]

Starting at the finished floor height that you want, determine what the thickness of your tile, thinset, and an uncoupling membrane will be. Then you will know how high your fill over the floor will be. I would look at self leveling concrete for that. Read the product's instructions for existing concrete cleaning or needed adhesion promoters. Mud shower bases are put in pretty dry.

 

[pima67]

Visit John Bridge Forum web site for lots of expert help on shower installs

 

[Dan in Pasadena]

 

[PugetDude]

^^what he said^^

 

[CGohring]

Visit John Bridge Forum web site for lots of expert help on shower installs

John Bridge is gone... :-(

 

[burger]

I’ve used Mapei self leveling concrete successfully in similar situations. I plan to use it again on an upcoming project where I will install vinyl flooring over a rough concrete slab.

 

[Just_Steve]

John Bridge is gone... :-(

That *****, I learned so much from that site.

 

[pima67]

maybe the wayback machine has copies

 

[jake28]

Tiling and CNCing

I tapped out. Or came to my senses, depending on whom you ask. I hired a professional tile installer, and I’m a happy camper.



“It’s not a problem” is my new favorite phrase. The tile installer arrived earlier this week and inspected the remnant shards of the floating floor. A wry smile, a knowing nod, and muttering of “muy mojado” confirmed my instinct that my first attempt was just too wet.

I pointed at the floor, and received “it’s not a problem” in return. Suggested a tile layout and then changed my mind: “it’s not a problem.” Admitted I hadn’t chosen a grout color yet and got the same understanding response. My soon-to-be-three-year old charged in and nudged the laser level askew and even that transgression wasn’t enough to irk the kind grandfatherly figure with grout under his nails.

So I shook hands, and left, moved on to other projects in the shop and in the woods, and tile work should be done tomorrow.

———

As for other projects, I got to play with a CNC. If good fences make good neighbors, then 4x8 CNCs and access to them makes for great neighbors. My neighbor Corbin has a wonderfully-outfitted shop for all things wood and metal, and is supremely technically profficient and generous with his time and tools. He also has a lovely YouTube channel.

My Mother and Father-in-law run an Equestrian Center and stable nearby they host trail rides and summer camps. With a laundry list of projects heading in to the next year of camps, I volunteered to make new signs for different parts of the stables. Which was good enough reason to get schooled and tooled on the basics of CNCing.



Step 1: play in Illustrator.

Step 2: Select all > Cut.

I’m being deliberately glib about the process because, just like hiring a professional tile installer, I received the benefit of my neighbor's tooling and expertise. With a bit of handholding through some awkward user interfaces, I was able to start cutting signs on my own in under an hour. I got to appreciate, without having to fully digest, the nuance of different cutting bits, work holding solutions, dust collection, custom G-code engineering, and a level and fortified cutting surface. I left happy.




The entrance sign is made from a chunk of old growth redwood thatI’d had stashed in the corner of the shop in San Francisco left over from a set of dining tables I made around 2015. The tree was likely felled in the 1920s and used to make a water tank in rural west Marin. The black stain is the extent of the water penetration. It’s gorgeous wood, and I can’t help but appreciate that the mere 1.75” thickness of one little piece is a small record of over a century of growth.



I’ll be painting the lettering and staining next. After I’ve resurrected my 911.

Edit: ruminating on CNCs.

I’ve been on the board of a furniture school in Maine for the last six years. They’ve come to adopt and appreciate the role of a CNC in a traditional woodworking practice, but it has taken some time. When I was at RISD as a graduate student I was constantly among undergraduates who were supremely proficient in CAD and 3D printing, but their facility in technology would often just expedite the production of total ****. When a CNC, or a 3d printer, is the last step in the process rather than the first resort, and it’s used and understood in the context of the rest of a shop, it can be a glorious complement.

A few years ago I remember seeing an animation detailing how many items from an office desk in the 1950s have been subsumed by the smart phone: the Rolodex for contacts, the inbox and outbox, the typewriter l and note pad, the clock and calendar, and even a pen and pencil. A CNC can offer much of the same convenience and functionality of a table saw, router table, planer and jointer, bandsaw and fret saw, hand plane and chisel, biscuit joiner and Domino. But, just like the iPhone doesn’t necessarily offer a better calendar experience than a hard copy, the CNC has real compromises that the dedicated tools do not.

 

[Mr onetwo]

Thanks for the tip on Corbin's YT channel....looks very interesting

 

[bdbecker]

...So I shook hands, and left, moved on to other projects in the shop and in the woods, and tile work should be done tomorrow...

To quote Kenny Rogers... "you gotta know when to fold 'em".

No shame in calling in a pro.

 

[jake28]

A detour: treework

Funny thing about living in the woods; there are a lot of trees. And sometimes those trees need to come down.

I find felling and chipping trees to be a cathartic, though perhaps, Sisyphusian task. The woods around my place are overly dense after a 150 years of suppressing natural and human-induced fires, primarily with White Fir and Jeffrey pine trees, all conifers, with the occasional Aspen and birch thrown in.

I think the fun of dealing with trees when there is the right balance between the size of the tree and the size of available machinery to contend with them.

A case study:

This lonely White fir succumbed to beetles, and was also in the exact spot I’ve been wanting to put a vegetable garden. There is plenty of space below, but the shadow from this one tree would out a real damper on my agricultural aspirations.

Enter, excavator.




Total elapsed time from standing tree to limbed, logs, and horizontal? Less than 15 minutes. I pushed the tree over with excavator, picked it up whole, and then limbed it with a few sideways swipes of the excavator bucket. I ended up using a chainsaw to cut the logs to lengths, but that was the extent of the manual labor.

By commercial standards by 6-ton machine is a trivial distraction, but for trundling around the back yard it is more than adequate. Toddler Lucas thoroughly enjoys sitting on my lap while digging holes and is developing a keen eye for placing rocks artistically.

But the actual work comes not in felling, but in redistributing the tree. So I bought a 24” chipper.


Of every tool that I’ve used, the chipper is top of the last of equipment that keeps me humble. When it’s running and working, it’s an assault on every sense simultaneously. It’s loud, it rattles and shakes like a dog emerging from a lake, and it spews dust and turns sap into an aerosol that finds every bodily and vehicular nook and cranny. Had I not limbed the fir, which was about 50’ tall and 14” in diameter at the base, it would have consumed it in a single pass without flinching. I bucked up the tree into more pieces only because there was no easy way to get the chipper close.

Small but satisfying distractions.