A few updates with reflection...

It's funny, if you think about it for a while. In five days, it'll be a full year since we first started this blog on this bathroom renovation, and here I am making more piecemeal updates. If I were to offer advice to those thinking of doing the same, I'd be conflicted. One side of me would say "get a general contractor and just buy the bathoom you want", while the other would say "do as much yourself as you can, since you are the only one to blame."

Of the issues we encountered, to be honest, most of the failings were on us (me) with a lack of planning or followup or not really knowing what we were getting into. We didn't want to spend too much money, and we wanted to do a lot ourselves. The things we couldn't do, we wanted to hire out. The problem with that was two-fold -- we wanted multiple estimates, and we wanted it done to code, so it wasn't a surprise if we ever sold the house. The city of Minneapolis is fairly strict on code compliance when inspecting a house before sale, so best to deal with that now rather than later. The other side of this requirement is that this economy has produced a lot of people hunting for one-off tasks to supplement their income, but they're not licensed, insured, or ready to pull permits. Sometimes, you don't find that out until after the estimate. Sometimes, you line stuff up with people, and they don't return calls or don't show up. More time passes, and with full time jobs and the fact that it isn't the primary room, it just falls behind. (and behind, and behind)

So, here we are, but we're really in the final stretch. Since the last update, electrical was finished, but not really a lot to show there. They removed junction boxes from where our shower will be, added lines for lights above the sink and an outlet next to it, and ran a new GFCI run to the box. We do finally have our switches on the inside rather than the outside, which I'm sure will mess me up for a while.

We decided to replace the insulation from 60s/70s-era R-3 Balsam Wool to some nice R-13 fiberglass.

We also had the sliding window replaced with some really great glass block. The design makes the room have even more light, which is fantastic. It's really hard to take a picture of, though, so you get two -- one for the light, one for the texture.

Now, we have to do the shower pan, and then bring in drywallers. Then, we'll do some tiling and look at ordering shower glass. During that process, we'll start installing fixtures, and it'll almost be a bathroom again. At the very least, someone will be able to pee upstairs again.

Holy crap, plumbing!

Muhaha, you thought you wouldn't see this thing pop up ever again! You figured we either finished by now, or would be stuck with an unfinished bathroom forever!

You're probably right!

Our original deadline of getting the bathroom done before my wife's mother came to town came and went. We went through three plumber options, and none of them worked out either from lack of response, lack of ability to do so in a timely manner, or lack of insurance and so on. But! We finally got a plumber, and after a day of work, he's almost done. He ran new pipe all the way down to the basement, installed drains for the toilet, sink, and shower, and will be running water lines and valves on his next visit along with the inspector. This means we can bring in the electrician soon, and start tiling shortly after.

This is taking forever. Those of you with high hopes that you can get stuff done quickly by outsourcing are either lying to yourselves or just better at it than I am. Probably the latter.

Anyway, here's where the sink goes:

Here's where the toilet and shower go:

Soon.. soon!!

A phoenix from the ashes

When you last left these intrepid explorers, they were embarking on a mission to destroy and recreate a bathroom by a certain timeline. Those explorers, before running into the brick walls of Code Violation and Financial Doom, left a bathroom looking like this:

Back to the first person -- there's only so long you really want to do that. So, since then, nearly three months have passed, but everything finally got in order. We had a plan, knowing that we needed 30" for the shower plus 4-5" for the curb... and then learned that we needed 30" of space for the toilet (15" from the center of the bowl to the wall or obstruction), but we only had 62" from wall to wall total. We thought we were going to have to do a whole new plan, putting the shower where the sink and toilet once were, and putting the toilet in the really low space you see above, that corner where the orange bucket is. Those of the male persuasion will see the difficulty with that arrangement, but we were willing to take that for the team!

Luckily, Plan B arose.

So, to the left of that picture was some framing around our stack pipe. There was some room there. So, some "friends" came over to adjust that frame to get it flush with that pipe, giving us those extra few inches we need to go back to the original plan. So, the old frame:

The new frame:

The sink and faucet will be delivered by the 14th. Cabinet and toilet are purchased. Tile and all of that was purchased long ago. Our plumber currently isn't returning calls, but hopefully he will be coming to relocate pipes for us. The electrician is ready to relocate outlets and install our shower fan, and the drywallers are ready. Let's see what we can do in a week. :)

Wouldn't it be nice to have another bathroom?

Things I get a lot: "Where did you go?"

    "Why aren't you posting?"

        "How's the bathroom?"

Okay, rub it in. That's fine, I deserve it. I also see that it's been two months since I posted with nary an update. "Well, then," you might say, "the bathroom must be finished and beautiful!"

Oh, nay nay, I say. Nay, nay, nay. :(

We did get word back from the city that they do not do variances for the work we want to do. If we were replacing an existing fixture, then they'd allow it if it was workable under previous code. However, if you're gutting and re-doing, then you have to do it to current code.

We're about to spend a bunch of money on one of three or so options. Updates soon.

Technical Difficulties

I know, I know, but we aren't just slacking.

The delay in updating the blog is probably familiar to anyone who has seen me blog in the past -- I'll blog a few days, and then nothing at all. We're not on vacation, and I haven't lost interest, to the contrary, I'm excited as heck. This is just the boring part of the process.

Once we finished primary demolition, we brought in a plumber to do an estimate on our plan for the relocation and addition of fixtures and drains. It was bad news after bad news -- double our estimated budget, and not within code. We knew a shower stall had to be at least 30"x30", but we had no idea that there needed to be at least 15" from the toilet to the shower wall. If we get a corner toilet, we're at 14". My plan now is to figure out if we can get some type of variance from the city to allow us to go to plan. Our other options include relocating the toilet to a place where guys have to sit down for twice the price, or trying to get a tub up there and seeing if we can pull off a small tub to change code requirements. I don't want to pay more, and I don't want to shove a tub in that bathroom.

So, Nick's off to City Hall at some point.

Maybe we'll get another estimate, too, just in case.

More updates when we have them. :)

Bathroom - Day Two/Day Three - Finish Demolition

I'm pretty sure a lot of people are similar to I am when it comes to taking on a large project. I'm actually wondering if someone is reading this now (in the future), about to do a project of their own. I go online, read other people's stories and experiences doing remodels of rooms in their house. Everyone has some type of horror story -- bad construction, garbage, old beer bottles, rodents, bugs, etc. I'm almost sad that I didn't run into anything that looked like a horror story. If anything, the horror of our place was how well it was built, and I'm a little sad... because I really doubt we're going to be able to do a better job of this. :( Everything was ridiculously solid, overengineered, you name it. For a sixty year old house, it should not have been this well sealed or put together. We're lucky to have the place, but man, did that suck.

The horror story for our house is I'm pooooooooped.

We didn't do much during the week after "Day One", maybe an hour or so of continued work on a Tuesday, so I'm not counting it as a day. Day Two was Saturday, and was actually about four hours of work. We knocked out the rest of the walls except for a couple of corners and the attic-facing wall -- I wanted to make sure we finished the floor before pulling that wall out, as I thought we were going to have to tarp it up to keep the house sealed. The floor was finished, finally.

Man, the floor.

The floor was a standard small-pieces-of-ugly-tile routine. After we took a little class on tiling, we figured ripping that up would be a cinch, but no. This is old school. This is tile, on top of a good 3 inches of floor mix, on top of wire mesh, on top of tar paper, on top of the wood subfloor. My wife decided to take the floor on during the first day, made a good effort, but didn't make it too far at that point. On the second day, we found a bigger hammer, and she found her groove with the larger hammer and using the wonderbar as a chisel and puller. She cranked through the rest of that bathroom tile, and we both pulled up the two layers of metal mesh until the wood subfloor finally appeared. At that point, we called it good for the day.

Just to give you an idea of what the walls and floor look like in a dumpster, this is what is now sitting in our driveway. Trust me, it looks bigger in person.

Today (Day Three) was the finish line for demolition. We took out that last wall to find.. more insulation, so waiting so long to do it ended up being pointless. Fought with some edge drywall, took off drywall sticking to high and low places, accent tile around a closet, and yanked frames off of doors, cabinets, and the window. After everything was yanked out, and the nails removed from the studs, some serious sweeping was required, and the room was totally. finally. done.

Well, done being destroyed. It's now useless as a bathroom. :)

Next step - call a plumber, ask about adding some water lines and a new drain. Once the plumber is finished, drywallin' time.

I'm so glad my wife does most of the work.

I'm pooped. :)

Bathroom - Day One - Begin Demolition!

One of the advantages to living in a fairly close-knit community is that you generally know your neighbors, and those who have been there a while can tell you stories about those who lived in your house before. When we bought the house in March of 2010, one of our neighbors added me as a friend on Facebook the day we closed, as did the two people who owned the house. If anything, that felt like a good sign -- the owners were confident enough in the home that I could stalk them fairly easily, and either the neighbor wanted to know us, or wanted to know about us, and I was okay with it either way. Anyway, one of the stories is that the original owner of our home either designed or contracted the construction of many of the similar homes in the area, but this was the one he designed for himself. I'm not sure why -- it's not the best part of the surrounding area in terms of location, it's not at an intersection with a big yard, so who knows if it's true. What is true, however, is this home is solid as a rock. We rediscovered that today.

We started a little before noon by getting out all of our supplies, and taping up a plastic barrier on the door to keep out dust, especially since the door was likely going to come off at some point today. We sealed the top, and under an hour later, one side. Note that the door matches the angle of the ridiculous ceiling in there.

... and we finally got around to actually starting to pull things apart. Everything starts with motivation, but motivation only gets you so far when you've never taken a toilet apart before, or figured out how those built in soap dishes are actually held on. Bit by bit, though, we figured this old bathroom out. Pulled the toilet out with minimal spillage and sealed it up with a plug. Got the sink pulled off after cranking on the shutoff valve with a pipe wrench. From there, it just slid up and out. We ended up hammering on the soap dishes, toilet paper holder, and towel bars with a hammer. From there, it was an easy transition to start stripping the tile off the wall, since the holes were already there. The worst part of this first part was just carrying all of our newfound crap downstairs and out to the bagster. :(

As mentioned before, we're trying to add a shower to this bathroom. Due to the ridiculous shape, one whole half of the bathroom can't reasonably have fixtures. I mean, sure, we could put a toilet there, but then everyone who uses it would have to sit. Awkward for some. So, the plan was to take a chunk out of one of the walls, and trying to put an inset sink in there. The bathroom's floorplan looks like a horizontally flipped P, which we thought was a little odd, as there was some obvious negative space between the bathroom and the bedroom next to it. We drilled a hole in that wall, saw pipes on either side, and thought that it made sense that there was a wall there -- but we could make it work! So, let's rip out some drywall, and...

eff.

Right about where a fantastic place for a sink would be, of course that pipe has another pipe coming out of it. There's also a lot of wood framing in the way, but that's all workable. This? This may be another few questions and few hundred from either the plumber or another contractor, depending on what this pipe is for. I'm sure we'll figure it out.. maybe.. or there's a lot of sitting in my future.

Anyway, end of the day arrived. We got all of the wall tile off, made a good start on drywall and floor tile, and ordered tile and supplies to tile from one of the tile places nearby. We're tired, it's hazy up there, and a shower sounds great. All in all, a good start.