Sometime last year, my wife and I decided that it would be prudent to downsize and move into her tiny cottage. The incredible location of the cottage—overlooking a pristine salt marsh—would make any sacrifice of space well worth the effort. The potential move presented us with an entire flock of ducks that we needed to put in a row. And of course I have volunteered to do any of the work that I possibly can—mostly on the weekends.
At the top of the list was replacing the cottage kitchen. We began by purchasing a new, highly efficient—but smaller—refrigerator. We also bought a new, smaller gas (propane) range to replace the old electric stove. When we looked into getting the range hooked up, we were told that adding a gas appliance meant running a new line, which meant pulling a permit, which meant bringing that entire system—in place since the 1940s—up to 2018 code.
A quick check by the plumber revealed that the gas lines were woefully undersized. Plus the propane tank was currently located about 6 inches from the north (marsh side) of the cottage. Current code puts the minimum safe distance for the tank at 3 feet from the building. But because the back of the cottage abuts the marsh, moving the tank 3 feet from the house would require special dispensation from the conservation folks, which can be frustrating and time-consuming at best, to say nothing of messing up the views from that side. So our solution would be moving the tank to the opposite side of the cottage and reinstalling it just beyond the outdoor shower, where it would have better access for filling as an added benefit.
The tank had been supplying propane for hot water as well as for two indoor space heaters. One of the heaters, a wood-stove look-alike mounted in the brick fireplace, heats the west end of the cottage.
The other heater, in the dining room at the east end of the cottage, always reminded me of something that belonged in the Smithsonian. Aside from being woefully inefficient, its pilot light seemed to blow out at the most inopportune times, and relighting it amounted to a game of roulette with matches and highly explosive gas. Having tired of that adventure, we decided that part of the cottage upgrade would be a new heating system. From my experience working at JLC, we figured that the simplest and best upgrade would be installing mini-splits.
We opted on installing two units—one in the east end of the cottage to replace the ancient monster, and one in the west end, leaving the fireplace as a backup for ambiance. The minis would also double for AC during the two or so weeks every summer when the hot weather had us putting in window-mounted AC units. Again, realize that this is all happening before work on the new kitchen can begin.
After weighing our options, we decided that both inside units should run off the same outside condenser, which meant that we’d have to run the coolant lines to the west-end unit through the cottage crawlspace. Our mini-split installer, Mario, turned out to be a Jamaican gentleman who was easily 6 feet 6 inches tall (his company is cleverly named “Cool Runnings,” but Mario confessed to never sitting on a bobsled). To make the installation go more quickly, I volunteered—much to Mario’s relief—to do the crawlspace detail.
Aside from an infestation of camel crickets, the crawlspace was very tolerable. A local energy company had come in a couple of years prior, covered the crawlspace floor with poly, and sprayed foam insulation on all the perimeter walls. By the light of my headlamp, I was struck by the gorgeous old-growth Doug-fir floor joists—original equipment in this 1940s cottage. The joists spanned the entire 20-foot width of the cottage with tight grain and most without a single knot. As the middle man, I fed the lines across the crawlspace, securing them to the joists. Outside the cottage, I built a concrete-block pad for the compressor. The mini-split installation went without a hitch, and the following week, the electrician came in and did the hookup.
With the mini-splits installed and working flawlessly, we could now consider disconnecting the gas-fired heating units in the cottage to prepare for moving the gas tank. But while the minis were being installed, the propane company came by and filled the tank, so for the moment, we still needed to run the gas heater in the west end to empty the tank. For the record, the mini-splits seem to work amazingly. They are super quiet, and at least in the east end of the cottage, they bring the rooms up to temperature very quickly.
Meanwhile back in the kitchen, we covered the new fridge and got ready for the demo work. I began by chipping off the old tile countertops, and then attacked the plywood underlayment and cabinets. I removed the old cabinets carefully and gave them to a friend who grabbed them to use in a new workshop he was building.
Those smaller appliances I mentioned earlier would increase the counter space and give us space for an 18-inch dishwasher, a luxury that the old kitchen had never enjoyed. When the plumber had come to look at running new gas lines, he also checked out the kitchen plumbing. Installing a dishwasher meant changing the plumbing, which meant pulling a permit, which meant updating all the plumbing to the latest code. The kitchen sink had been installed with an S-trap and a pop-up plumbing vent, (aka air admittance valve), two no-no’s in the Massachusetts plumbing code. So the next big hurdle would be installing new exit plumbing for the sink and dishwasher along with an approved plumbing vent.
The new kitchen drain would have to exit into the wall below the kitchen bay window, so I removed the drywall along that wall. Removing the drywall exposed the blown-in cellulose insulation that also had to come out. It was packed pretty tight, so taking it out was sorta like shoveling gray snow. After emptying the stud bays, I vacuumed up the excess insulation. As it happens so often, life intersects work. I happened to be working on a Training the Trades article for the April issue, on sheathing. I mentioned that through World War II, pine boards were the sheathing of choice and beaded pine boards were often used—which was exactly what I found as I opened up the kitchen wall.
The east wall of the kitchen backed up to a bathroom wall with a plumbing chase for the shower. I cut back the drywall on that wall to see what kind of path might be available for the plumbing vent. The wall was a hodgepodge of framing with remnants of drywall, sections of fiberglass batts, and excess cellulose insulation in back of the cast-iron tub. It appeared that at one time, mice had been enjoying the warm confines of the chase. I donned rubber gloves and pulled out shreds of insulation that rained droppings as I put them in trash bags.
When the bulk of the infested insulation had been removed, I once again vacuumed all the loose debris that had fallen. This time, the vacuuming exposed a strange dark shape of some sort coming out of the cellulose beside the tub. I stuck my finger in the cellulose and pulled out two empty whiskey bottles. I chuckled remembering John Carroll’s Backfill column a few months back in which he wrote about how he left a time capsule for folks to discover in the future. My guess is that this was the sort of time capsule that no one was supposed to uncover. I immediately began to wonder who had left the “gift” for me to discover: The plumbers who had installed the tub? The drywallers? Or maybe another tradesman who spent a lazy afternoon guzzling cheap booze while enjoying the views that the cottage had to offer?
The plumber arrived early on a Saturday morning. He laid out the exit plumbing and began drilling. Barely a half inch into the first stud, he hit a nail, and then hit nails on every single stud after that. When we got to the corner, the Forstner bit tore through the jack studs under the kitchen window and then hit a nail coming straight through from the other side. We did some creative drilling/gnawing work and finally broke through. The cottage has what is known locally as a Cape Cod Basement. One corner of the foundation drops to full depth to create an 8-foot-by-10-foot space that houses the water heater and electrical panel. A quick check of the kitchen floor from below revealed that the plumbing line would have to reverse slightly to break through the floor in an area clear of the joists. As the sink drain came through the framing and into the tub chase, the plumber used a “sweep 90” that has a more gentle (code approved) curve, and then a pair of 22-degree fittings to line up the T-Wye to go through the floor.
The plumber ran the vent coming out of the T-Wye through the upper plate in the neighboring stud bay. In the loft space directly above the plate, he increased the pipe diameter from 1 1/2 inches to 2 inches (minimum approved diameter for a secondary vent), just above the loft floor. While the plumber completed the hookup in the basement, I installed the upper length of the vent pipe along with the roof boot, working in the teeth of an icy northwest wind whipping across from the marsh.
The plumbing inspector gave his blessing, and the following weekend, I pieced rigid foam into the wall under the kitchen sink, doing my best to seal out the cold drafts coming in from the marsh. Drywall is next, where I get to use all the tricks I learned from Myron Ferguson over the years. And with any luck, in a couple of weekends I should be ready to install the cabinets that I ordered online from a company listed in Gary Striegler’s article on ready-to-assemble cabinets. I figure that if a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, having this crusty old editor installing this kitchen might be downright terrifying.
Photos by Roe Osborn
