En... not so sweet

Since the last post we’ve had a few Saturdays of working in cramped quarters, where some tempers have flared due to, well, working in cramped quarters. But, we finally have all the “guts” finished, so we can move on to the fun stuff! But first, we did make some modifications! We didn’t do all of this in the order I’m listed here, as some things had to be done to get other parts of the job moving, but it’s easier to describe in chunks.

After demoing the shower itself, we had to take down the walls and the cement board in the ceiling. This took longer than anticipated as the pieces of wood on to the joists in the ceiling were a) attached with 9000 nails and b) rather finicky to remove, as we couldn’t risk pulling down any of the vapor barrier and having a ton of attic insulation fall on our heads.

After that, as Rob started tearing up the floor I started removing the old insulation and re-insulating with the good stuff. The reason we were doing this was to see if there was any water behind the wall and the bathroom tended to be chilly, so we wanted to see if we could figure out way.  We did discover that there were some gaps in the floor joists where the bathroom juts over our porch that were pretty much open to the elements. I filled those with Great Stuff. 

You can see the Great Stuff foam in the gap between the joists on the left. As it was drying I put a small piece of insulation over it and then wrapped with vapor barrier.

 

This flooring was very annoying to remove. The previous owners merely slapped old floor over top of more old flooring so there were 3 pieces of old particle board adhered together that we had to use the circular saw and sawzall to remove. And they were HEAVY. 

Tearing up the floor was very important for this job because the bathroom had always smelled musty, plus, there was a disconcerting stain growing downstairs above my chrome T-Rex head. 

We discovered the reason for the discoloration… when we removed the toilet, we found the previous owners did not screw the toilet down, but merely used caulking. Over time this caulking wore away and the toilet started to leak… below the floor line onto the drywall below. 

Yeah, all that dark stain is water. TOILET water. 

I got the pleasant job of scraping away the old caulking from the toilet seal. As kinda gross as that was, it’s important to make sure when we re-installed the toilet, it’s done PROPERLY. 

Also – it’s annoying as hell not to have a floor! You can’t step between the joists because then you’ll fall through the drywall into the floor below, but the joists are hard, just too slender to sit on with your butt for more than a minute, and we were wearing steel toed shoes that aren’t designed for balance beam acts. So we made an island out of an old piece of the flooring! 

My island of hammer and drill

The Electrical we also redid. Originally the washroom had a fan (luckily!), a vanity light that was part of the medicine cabinet, and a dull light in the shower. We discovered that while the previous owners did have the proper water protection around the shower light fixture, they used duct tape instead of tuck tape to fix the vapor barrier they ripped. Sigh. 

At least they tried

We decided to leave the vanity where it was and just replace the shower light with a new one, but we had two other electrical tasks.

1

   1.  Replace the fan with a new one.  This was all Rob. Not only is he an electrician but the attic… I went up, saw a spiderweb and nearly fell off the ladder. Scrape possibly poopy caulk from a toilet drain? Sure, not problem.  Cobweb from a probably dead spider? Nope. Nope. NOPE.  

So Rob used the drywall saw to widen the box for the fan and then installed the new one. 

Fans in bathrooms with showers/baths are VERY important

2   2. We also wanted to add a pot light over the toilet for more lighting in the room (plus easier reading! haha). As Rob ran Romex from the vanity fixture to our proposed new one I measured from where the new shower doors would end and the wall to find the center of that, then found the center from the wall to the door opening. Then I did the important job of stabbing a screwdriver into the middle for Rob to find.

Yay! A fan to mask pooping and a light to help make it fun!

 There were also some small things we had to do. The vent for the room was old and crappy so we replaced it with a new one (which was a bigger pain than we expected, because the previous owners had MANGLED the opening of the vent) and we also moved the sink pipes a little so we could have a floating vanity. We also moved the shower piping from the floor area (it had previously run up the shower wall) to the wall for my rainfall showerhead!    

But, before we could finish the piping, we had to put the floor back.  This wasn’t all that bad as the room was pretty square and the joists were fairly level. So as Rob did the aforementioned plumbing I measured and cut some 2x3s to screw to the joists so we could use them as something to screw the new floor into on the edges. I don’t have any photos of that, but here is the room with nice, new non-shitty floor. 

No poopy water to be found!

My AWESOME father-in-law Dave came by to help us with the actual plumbing in the wall for the showerhead. And by help I mean he showed up while we were out and did the entire thing! Well, I arrived the last few hours to help cut the pipes and run up and down the stairs turning off the water as his lackey, but Dave was an amazing help us save hours of time. We are super indebted to Dave. :)

Dude is a PRO

We also had a funny moment where we realized Rob and I didn’t label which pipe was hot and which was cold, so we had to attach the new sink faucet to one of the lines to see which was which!

After the plumbing was done, while Rob was doing electrical, I wrapped and strapped said piping. The main reason for doing this isn’t to help with heat retention, but to prevent the pipes from rattling against the wood when water is running through them. So there they are, nice and snug!

The last thing we did before calling it a day (or a month and a half) was to put drywall in the ceiling hole. We aren’t tiling the ceiling so we first had to nail some thin pieces of plywood to the joists to make the drywall flush with the rest of the ceiling drywall (cement board, which was there before, is ¼” thicker than drywall). Then we had to cut the oddball shape (which, because it was the end of the day we messed up slightly and got in a fight) and adhered it. Then Rob put up a piece of cement board for fun while I tidied up. 

Next Steps!  Finish cement boarding and drywalling! Mud and sand.  Paint the ceiling.  Tile! Paint the walls (might come bfore the tile).  Purchase a vanity and vanity light. 

Hints: 

1.  If you are tearing up a floor, save a piece to use as an island!

2.  Wrap plumbing pipes in insulation to keep them from rattling

3.   Make sure to properly install your toilet

4.  If you are going to tile in any areas subjected to high moisture or water use cement board!