Step 7 - Plumbing and Electrical

I had done some of the electrical prior to prepping for drywall for practicality's sake (I needed light to work in the kitchen), but I'll recount how I went about it here since it makes more sense for chronology's sake.

The last thing to do before buttoning up the walls is electrical and plumbing--experience in which I possessed none. Fortunately, I was able to easily tap the copper water lines and sewer stack that were running up to the upstairs bathroom, which were conveniently located behind the wall I had just demolished, approximately 18" from where I planned on installing the sink.

Not knowing anything about soldering pipe, and basing it only on my experience with soldering electronics, I wasted an entire spool of solder that came with the torch. I bought another spool and researched the correct method on the Internet. I had the torch heat far too low, and I didn't realize that the idea is to heat the pipe to the temperature that will melt the solder, not vice versa. After that, it was cake.

Tapping the sewer stack was a little more tricky. Ordinarily, PVC (the white plastic pipes) joints are as simple as 1) coating with purple acetone cleaner 2) coating with epoxy 3)inserting pipes into joints and 4) turning 1/4 turn. I had no problem with that until it came to make the last connection. Because I was connecting the top of the stack, (which was fixed) to the bottom of the stack (which was also fixed) I could not turn the joint 1/4 turn. After screwing up twice (looked fine, but leaked), I decided to go with a rubber boot (absent from the above picture) to make the final connection. It's simply a rubber boot that you slip over each end of the joint, with hose clamps that are tightened down. Worked like a charm, and it was cheap too.

Next was electrical. I was planning on installing recessed lights in the kitchen. Recessed lights (cans) come in two varieties - new construction, and remodel. The remodel cans are simply inserted into a hole in a finished ceiling, then you turn screws on the can which extend little arms that hold it in place. New construction cans have adjustable length hanger bars that are simply nailed into the joists. I purchased the remodel cans first, but realized quickly that 1) stud finders to not work on plaster ceilings and 2) the arms on remodel cans are not designed to accommodate the thickness of a plaster ceiling and will not work with a plaster ceiling.

Since I was covering up the plaster ceiling entirely anyway, I decided I would jury-rig the new construction cans to work. To accommodate for the thickness of the ceiling, I first attached 2x4s to the joists, and then attached the cans to the 2x4s, which hung lower than the joists, thus lowering the cans, and accommodating for the thick ceiling.

As you can see from the above picture, cutting the hole for the recessed light in the upper right corner removed all of the support that corner of the ceiling had. It collapsed entirely. I decided to deal with that later.

I also installed pendant lights. For some reason, the remodel electrical boxes seemed to work ok here. You can see here where I hit a stud by mistake and had to install my electrical box a couple inches to the right.



I also wired a GFI outlet for the kitchen backsplash and attached 3 more outlets to that. In most localities, all that is required to meet code for outlets in wet locations is that the first outlet in the series be a GFI. That outlet, so long as its functioning properly, will automatically cut power to any outlets after it on the same line, if there is a ground fault in any of those proceeding outlets.

Step 6 - Preparing for Drywall

A rowhouse poses a unique problem when it comes to drywall: all of the exterior walls are solid brick, and thus, you cannot simply drill screws into it to affix drywall. There are a couple of routes one can take to get around this problem. A friend suggested that I use Liquid Nails construction adhesive as well as small roofing nails to hold the drywall while the adhesive cured.

I did as my friend suggested, in spite of my misgivings--it just doesn't seem like any amount of glue could hold a whole sheet of drywall. But in fact, it did. However, plaster walls are very uneven, and this posed problems at the seams, where one sheet would stick out farther than another. I had my friend who suggested the whole thing come over and help me fix it. We put a lot more nails into it near the seams, as well as some more glue. While it did work, I didn't feel comfortable using it on the other exterior wall, so I hung furring strips, which is the other option.

Furring strips are 1x3 pieces of wood that are screwed into the brick using masonry anchors, (I used Tapcon screws), which then provide a surface that can be drilled into, just like an ordinary wood stud.



As you can see here, I also opted for the R6 foam insulation. Not much protection, but every little bit helps.

Next, I framed out the cabinet wall using 2x4s and 3" decking screws.



Incidentally, here, you can also see where I patched a hole in the chimney, where I knocked out a brick while removing the plaster. I used some cement patch from Home Depot, and some wire mesh that I found under the plaster as a substrate for the cement. I followed the directions on the cement bag exactly, and the cement was like soup for about 15 minutes, and then it started firming up. Within about 8 minutes of my noticing the cement curing, it was too solid to work with. Fortunately by then, I had already patched the hole.


Here, you can see where I framed out an alcove for the refrigerator, to accommodate its depth.

Step 5 - More Demolition

As I mentioned earlier, the kitchen wall in this picture has a 9" bump in it, which would look strange once cabinets were hung here. The plan was to frame out the wall to the left of the bump so that it was all the same depth. The refrigerator was to go in the corner where the ladder is in this picture, but the refrigerator is too deep, and would stick out into the walkway. I decided to use my reciprocating saw to cut an alcove in the wall to accommodate the depth of the refrigerator.

It was then that I learned that the violent reciprocating action of the saw on a plaster and lath wall cracks all the plaster within a several foot radius of the cut. As a result, I ended up demoing the whole wall, since most of the plaster was destroyed by a small test cut anyway.


As you can see, the bump was due to the chimney. The builders also took advantage of the cavity created by the wall to conveniently run the sewer stack and hot and cold water lines to the second floor.

A messy, dusty job. I filled seven construction bags with plaster in the cleanup process. Plaster weighs a lot, you can only fill about 1/5 of a construction bag before it weighs over 60 lbs, and is no longer practical to carry. Plaster also has a propensity to go airborne. This demolition coated my living room in a fine layer of dust, in spite of the plastic drop cloth.