Bathrooms

Bathroom Blunders- Part 2

We left you hanging from the last post as to the progress of the bathroom. It was by far the worst room of the house that continued to haunt us and would be the very last room that we completed.

In Review

As you read in ‘Bathroom Blunders- Part 1’, there was wood floors underneath multiple layers of floor and the paneling came off relatively well. The plaster was in decent shape, but we would have to do a lot of scraping and sanding to get all of the glue off the walls that had once held up the paneling. There was a lot that needed to go into this bathroom to make it ‘nice’ being it was the only bathroom in the house.

The ‘Plan’

Our  next steps were to remove the vanity and prep the shower for tiling. This includes cement board, water proofing, and then putting up the subway tile. We then planned to do wainscoting on the bottom section of the walls, paint the ceiling and upper half of walls and install new fixtures. The window in the shower would also get swapped out for a glass block window to make it more water proof. The bathroom also needed some electrical work in that the outlets were not grounded, there was an outlet between the sink and the tub (yikes!!) and the two old dim lights would be wired into one light above the mirror. Sounds simple, right? HA!

Plumbing Perils

Where this house was located, the city required a permit even just to put a new toilet in. Because we were not planning to ever live there. we had to hire a company to pull the permit, do the work, and coordinate the inspection. Well that turned into re-piping because the diameter of the existing plumbing was too small and not to code as well as installing a new hot water heater. This was NOT in our initial budget! All of the plumbing work between the basement and bathroom took a few days to complete.

We also had to decide what we were doing in the shower. There was a weird built in cabinet INSIDE the shower that was studded in—this would affect the shower head as to how far it needed to stick out from the wall. We made the decision to keep that casing, which would make for interesting tiling. Yikes.

When the new toilet was going to be installed, it levitated over the floor! We had removed so many layers of flooring, the waste pipe had to be cut shorter so that the toilet actually say on the wax ring!

Flooring

The refinishing of the floors we actually hired out. We were trying so hard to finish the house before the babies were born that we valued time over the almighty dollar. Additionally, I could not help with any part of it if we did do it since I was pregnant. Once the sanding started, the toilet had to come out. Boo. Turned out there were so many holes and patches that needed to be done throughout the main floor, that it even took him and his crew over a week to get it all done.

The floors sanded up nicely!!

Ceiling & Walls

The ceiling that was up was clearly not the original ceiling and it had seen better days. It was quite dingy and discolored. Rather than trying to paint it, we took it down. The original ceiling was not in that bad of shape and only minor patching was needed. By removing it, we gained a little more height in there as well! Bonus!

The walls took quite a bit of prep work before they were ready to paint. First we scraped as much of the panel glue off as we could, then sanded what did not come off, and finally, patched all the holes and parts of plaster that were missing. The back wall in the shower had that window. SO MANY old homes have windows in the shower!! Was it common for neighbors to wave to each other from the shower back in the day?? Windows in the shower so often leak into the walls causing all kinds of issues. Switching it out to a glass block was definitely the way to go.

How will it turn out???

2 thoughts on “Bathroom Blunders- Part 2

    1. That was definitely one of the craziest bathrooms we have renovated. I can never see myself actually using any of these bathrooms that we buy!

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