Scattered Thoughts . . .

O ur outdoor shower project is coming along slowly but surely.  I am almost finished at this point.  I only have some touch-ups to do and some finishing touches.  I definitely wish this project moved along much more quickly though! As you can see in this first photo, I have stained all of the wood and added a roof and lighting.  Don't mind the rest of the back of the house.  That room just beyond the outdoor shower will be our last big project, inside and out.  There will be a set of French doors and a window and then I will add siding the match the rest of the house.  In the meantime, this outdoor shower is looking good and is helping to block that view of the one unfinished corner of the house.     Inside, this shower enclosure is rather spacious!  Actually, this is quite a bit nicer than our current bathroom! These two shelves were added yesterday... I installed the bench this morning... The wet area under this bench was from whe...

I had a very rare, very productive day yesterday but I'm left with excruciating  spinal pain from my lumbar spine all the way up through my thoracic and cervical spine (I have significant injuries in all three areas).  The pain was so extreme last night that it was taking my breath away!  My extensive spinal injuries are still inflamed even today but down to moderately tolerable levels.   Today I plan to do a bit of plumbing work if my body cooperates. I managed to get the entire shower and dressing area enclosed which made for a really good day.  I even made a door and hung it!   The day involved a lot of cutting, ripping and making rabbits on every piece of wood.  All of these piece fit together nicely.   The hot and cold spigots are installed.  Today's job is to connect these spigots to the house water supply.  I already have the wall inside the house that adjoins with this back wall of the house completely opened and ...

W hen I got up this morning, it wasn't raining so I immediately went outside to collect tools and building supplies for one part of this outdoor shower project that has been nagging at me for quite a while.   I had originally planned to use some leftover roofing membrane as a sort of shower pan to lead the water away from the house and toward the French drain.  I couldn't find any of my leftover roofing membrane though.  My next option was to bend my own aluminum flashing in place of the membrane.   So, this morning, I collected the rolled aluminum, some shears, my hand seamer, a hammer, and some straight lumber to use as a makeshift bending brake.  I had planned to head indoors at this point to get ready for my day and eat breakfast but i t was quite nice out there this morning so I stayed out there and started working on shaping the rolled aluminum into a flashing resembling half of a shower pan.   This flashing would protect the exposed lo...

W e have begun our outdoor shower project and we're looking forward to getting this fully finished and operational! The first step was the design including choosing finish materials.  That was fairly easy.  I roughly sketched some ideas on how to deal with drainage as well as what dimensions I should make this shower.  (The sketches are rough sketches and not close to being to scale.) We'll have a small dressing area when you first enter the shower.  The shower area will be adjacent to this dressing area.  In the dressing area, there will be a bench for sitting and hooks for hanging clothing and towels.   I did some online shopping searching for outdoor shower fixtures but I couldn't find anything that appealed to me so I decided to make my own fixture using black iron pipe, brass valves and a brass showerhead.  I'll write more about this later when I get to this part of the project... The next step was grading the area.  This took some time....