Bathroom...Check!

"Put a fork in me, I'm done."

     -Every single high school English teacher in America.

Luckily for us we've been done for a couple weeks now, I just haven't gotten around to blogging about it until now! Let's just get on to the before and afters, shall we?

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

There are still a few things we need to do: 

1) Shorten drawers of the vanity and put them back in (the vanity is currently drawer-less)--  The vanity used to be a dresser that lived in our bedroom, so Eric had to do a lot of cutting and adjusting to make it capable of housing plumbing.  I'll post more detailed pictures of the vanity once that's done.  

2)  Crown molding--   Nothing about our 43-year-old house is perfectly square, including this bathroom.  Consequently we couldn't tile all the way up to the ceiling, because it would look really bad, so our contractor just put some wood to act as a buffer and we're going to go back and embellish it a little bit.  Again, more pictures on that once it's done.

3) Floating shelves over the toilet--  On which I'll probably put some white towels, baskets, apothecary jars and things like that. 

This was a huge undertaking, and we are thrilled to be finished.  The before and after pictures are impressive, but the before and after experience is even more striking.  Whereas before our bathroom experience involved spongy floors, the smell of mold, peeling walls and a leaky toilet, now I feel like I'm in a spa!  

The half-bathroom is also finished, but I think I'll put that off for another post.  For now, let's just bask in the glow of our newly remodeled bathroom.

Ahhhhhhh.

The Final Stretch

Can we talk about the blog's new look?!  A couple days ago was the first time I even considered clicking around on my Blogger homepage long enough to select a different template, and I'm happy I did.  I think I also changed the settings so comments can be left without having to log into Gmail, so we'll see how that goes.  Moving on...

It has been 8 days since we embarked on our bathroom renovation and we still haven't showered.....

At home, I mean.  

But we're getting there!  If everything goes well, our full bathroom should be functional on Thursday! This is where I last left you:

And then this happened:

And this is where we are currently:

The only thing left for our contractor Dan to do is grout the shower and the floor tile, install the toilet and some other final touches.  Then we'll be ready to paint and install the vanity (Eric and his dad are building our vanity as I type this!), mirror, light fixtures, accessories, etc. 

Here's a picture of the half bathroom as of yesterday:

You can see the new pedestal sink, toilet and tile floors (these are the same floors that are in the full bathroom).  It's nice to actually be able to use this space, and very handy since it's currently our only functional bathroom.  Today I painted this room, but that will have to wait for another day because it's not done drying...and because we don't have a light fixture and it's too dark to take a picture!

The rest of this week is going to be very busy, but it's nice to be able to do something!  And hopefully tomorrow will be our last day of showering at the YMCA! More later...

Sal

Bathroom Anatomy 101

It is seriously only Wednesday?  Wow.  Here's the rundown:

Eric stayed home on Monday and continued demolishing the full bathroom while Dan, our contractor, started tiling the half bathroom.  That's where we'll start our pictures.

So far, so good.  He started discovering a good bit of rot, but we were totally expecting rot.  

Oh man, but this was bad.  And as you can see in the bottom picture, it went under the tub, which was an issue we had filed under, "It could happen, but we really hope it doesn't because that's a cast iron tub, dang it!" And you know the only way to remove a cast iron tub, don't you?

There is no such thing as salvaging a cast iron tub, you just have to bust it up and remove it in pieces (that jagged white thing is part of the tub).  We were sad to see it go, but we also had come to terms with the fact that it might have to happen before we even started.  So we shed a single imaginary tear and moved on.

That white rag you see on the left hand side of the top picture is where our toilet is supposed to be.  My co-workers and I had a good laugh about this picture as we imagined what it would be like to be sitting on the toilet and suddenly fall through the floor into the crawl space.  Seriously though, it could have happened. 

All of the sub floor had to go.  Then, once we exposed the joists, Dan decided that most of the joists had to go as well.  And yes, you're looking into our crawl space.

We knew going into this renovation that it was going to be pretty bad, but walking into your house and seeing this still makes your stomach churn a little bit! The good news is that we're done pulling stuff out and stuff is starting to go back in, including new and solid joists and sub-floor.

 Although this job has taken a little longer than we were expecting, I'm happier with my bathroom looking like this and knowing that there is no more mold and that our house is structurally sound.  

So how do you keep this from happening to your house?  Hire a professional to install your toilet.  The previous owners of this house were big on DIY, but perfectionism wasn't one of their strong suits.  Here's a picture of our half bath toilet's wax seal:

Although sort of gross looking, that wax seals the toilet and keeps any water from leaking out.  

Here's the toilet from the full bath:

It's no wonder that water was rushing out under our floor every time the toilet was flushed.  We're not sure how long this toilet was leaking, but you saw the results.  

And just for the fun of it, here's a picture of our junk pile:

More later...

Sal