The Bathroom Remodel

I had this great idea to remodel the half bath on the main floor of the house.

And it really was a great idea. While the bathroom was functional, it was not aesthetically pleasing. 

The walls in the bathroom were white like the rest of the house, which is fine. Nothing some paint can't fix.

The floor on the other hand, was gross. No amount of scrubbing could ever make the floor look clean. And since the house was a rental for twenty years before we bought it, I don't even want to think about the junk the floor has seen.

Out it goes!

And if you're going to take out the floor, you might as well cut out some drywall and throw some soundproofing insulation in between the wall for some added privacy.

Not a large project at all.

So let's begin taking everything out!

I started with the towel racks, not sure why a five by five room needed two towel racks but it had two.

And in case you wanted to preform pullups on the towel racks, very long screws kept those suckers mounted to the wall.

This is when I began questioning what the people prior were thinking. A question I had for the next two weeks.

 It was also amazing what I found once I began taking stuff out and down. Hello space for a medicine cabinet mirror which was covered by a giant mirror. A mirror so large Ms. Piggy couldn't fit it in her dressing room.

 One of my wonderful friends called me on Friday for a phone chat, and asked what I was doing. I was unhooking the toilet and draining it of water to remove it --The definition of adulthood, by the way. And once it was removed we got to see the grossness of our floor at a whole new level.

Everyone please join me a resounding EWWWWWW. 

So, I began peeling back the vinyl sheet and was met with this. Apparently, you do not need a subfloor across your entire floor, but only where the vanity will be resting.

For the record, it made it easier to pry up the particle board subfloor that was stapled every inch apart. It was very secure.

The last piece was the hardest to pry up, as it had the consistency of hamster cage lining.

It took about a week for me, Chris, and my wonderful friend Becky to pull up the particle board which was glued and stapled to the floor. And where there was no glue or staples it had fused itself to the floor.

Again, who did this?!

So, we decided to leave the floor for another day and start demoing the walls. I greatly enjoyed my drywall knife, which cuts through everything, except studs, heating vents, and anything not drywall.

Ok, it just cuts through drywall, but it does it very well. Also, Becky is very safety conscious and says eye protection is a must while cutting drywall.

So I grabbed my eye protection.

Yup, those are ski goggles. 

And at the end of the first day we made great progress. The walls were cut out, and most of the floor was ripped up. And I was feeling really good about destroying a bathroom.

But it was a little weird using duct tape for it's intended purpose. We took down a wall with the hope of moving a light switch closer to the door. Instead, we found a heating vent with puncture holes.

So I just taped those, and began padding the walls with insulation as Becky attacked the floor.

 Yup, that's a belt sander. And that is Becky using safety precautions.

Neither one of us used one before, but I've seen a few people using one to figure it out.

And keeping stereotypes alive we decided the best way to use one was like an iron. Keep it moving, and don't put a hole in the floor.

She got the glue and particle board chunks up pretty quick.

And we got the drywall up pretty quick. It was surprisingly easy to cut drywall. It's not that easy for us to read a ruler. We had measurements like: 34 inches and seven lines. Or 20 inches and two lines past 3/4.

While it was not legit ruler reading, it was pretty accurate.

(** We are capable of reading a ruler, and had legit measurements as well.)

Although, I had a wonderful moment of trying to figure out how many 16ths are in an inch.

I blame the dust or something.

I admit it was not my finest moment. But look, the walls got done.

We only had one issue of hanging it. A ninja nail snuck itself in a corner and made us crazy on why the drywall would not go flush. We figured it out. It was fine. Made us feel kind of dumb. But it was fine.

At 3pm on Thursday I was leaving for Whistler and I was on my own for adding texture to the wall. I could not get the texture to be consistent. Which is why it looks like a drunk sailor added texture with a seagull.

The theme for the bathroom is Great Lakes Winter, so I guess the seagull texture goes with it.

What was fun, as seven people walked into the house were all surprised I was remodeling the bathroom. And being engineers all had the question of why I was doing this right before we were supposed to leave.

It was supposed to be done by the time they got to the house. Oh well. 

A sore and broken Mo was back to work in the bathroom on Monday, with a quick paint job with paint leftover from my bedroom, it was time for the floor.

Oh the floor. It looks awesome, but it was a pain to grout.

Becky came up huge with methods of cleaning the grout off the rocks.

And floor went from this:

To this:

This all took a little more than a week, which involved a four day ski trip. So you would think the finishing touches would be a quick thing.

No.

It took us longer to put the bathroom back together than it did knocking everything down.

I thought four weeks before the Superbowl would give me plenty of time to finish the bathroom before thirty people came over to watch the game; and yet it was Friday night before the game we were installing a door.

For the record,  installing doors are a pain in the ass. But once Chris recognized his lovely wife made the drywall 1/8 of an inch longer than the header, and therefore impeding the top of the door jamb from being raised as it needed, and then sent lovely wife up a ladder with a knife to undo what was done, it was installed in under two hours.

And plumbing on Saturday morning for the sink. Chris took over because I could not get the PVC to connect on Friday:

I also struggled getting the connector piece to connect the 1 1/2 pipe to the 1 1/4 pipe.

Chris claimed he liked plumbing, or wouldn't mind doing it. And he completed the project with less than 26 hours remaining before people came over.

And this is how it all looks minus a mirror and four canvas prints of Great Lake lighthouses.

Not bad huh?

And surprisingly I still have all my fingers and there were no accidental holes in the wall. So that's a win.

Next project?

Well, because we are pros at hanging doors now, we're going to switch all the doors out in the hallway, and I'm going to be painting and removing the old baseboards. Woot!