Monday, January 19, 2009

Awur Baffroom Advenchur, Part Free

Crappy door knob
Tub and terlet in hand, we had no more excuse for not starting the work on the bathroom itself, which meant tearing out all the old crappy things we didn't like, such as the old tub/shower, the terlet, the vanity and, eventually, the 80's above-sink makeup lights. (Oh, and the super crappy rigged doorknob setup, as pictured at right, the only explanation for which I can imagine is that some genius locked themselves out of the bathroom at some point and had to cut the original knob out of the door in order to get back in. Not to say that I haven't done nearly this very thing since moving in, but I at least had the good sense to climb in a window after failing to pick the lock from the other side of the bedroom door.)

Crappy Vanity GONEThe crappy shimmed up vanity was the first to go and was easy enough to remove. Its departure left a vanity-shaped section of wallpaper exposed, once again showcasing the half-assedness of one or more sets of the previous asshole owners of our home. (Can't really say I would have done things much differently, but that doesn't diminish their assholity.) We hauled all the bits of it out to the back deck, except for the cabinet itself,which I put in the garage for future incorporation into my super-cool garage tool bench setup.


Crappy door knob
Next up, we began the removal of the tub. We knew this would be tricky, because it's not like you can just pick up the tub and haul it out, what with it being drywalled into place, hooked into the plumbing and likely glued to the subflooring beneath. Not knowing the best way to otherwise do things, we decided the easiest method was to demo the whole thing using a sawsall. And this we did, being careful not to cut through studs and floor and wiring. It was slow going, one piece at a time, but, as you can see from the accompanying pictures, we took her out to the studs.

Crappy tub and mouse leavings GONEThe truly unsettling part of all this, however, is that with each piece of tub we removed, we exposed another section of the inner walls of the bathroom and the evidence of a one time mouse occupation there. We saw no actual mice, but their leavings were numerous and disturbing. We were glad to have respirators, so as to breathe as little of the mouse-poo dust as we could. Previous owners, or perhaps the contractors that built the place, had tried to seal up a hole in the subflooring where the pipes entered the room from the crawlspace beneath our house, but some of the screening had been damaged or eaten through, allowing the mice access. The good news is that most of the subflooring looked pretty good, but there were a couple of spots that would need to be replaced.

Our overall plan was to replace the sections of subflooring we needed to, put down some concrete planking atop that, seal it, install the tub, put up more concrete planking around the tub, seal it too, patch some drywall, tile the walls above the tub, tile the floor, install the new toilet, install the new vanity and we'd be home free for a new bathroom. Of course, accomplishing all of the above would have taken us a goodly amount of time, even if things had run exactly to plan. Naturally, they haven't.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

4 comments:

The Comma Hander-Outer Lady said...

...once again showcasing the half-assedness of one or more sets of the previous asshole owners of our home...

I can't tell you how many times we've used this expression, along with other words organic in nature, to describe the "upgrades" done to our home.

You two are brave soldiers. Every time the spouse gets a hankering to tinker in the bathroom, I scream, "Do NOT touch anything until you're prepared to discover that the only thing keeping the bathtub from falling into the basement is a toothpick and some chewing gum!"

Gardenbuzzy said...

We could hear water dripping somewhere in or near the toilet in the master bedroom bath. So Hubby set out to discover what it was. Yes, the toilet was leaking, leaking into the subflooring under the cheap vinyl on top, thereby reducing the cheap particleboard to mush. Who knows how long we had perched on top of the pipes with mush under us, waiting to fall into the basement and hubby's boat parked underneath?
Hubby pulled out the toilet, guts of the toilet, floor, and sink/vanity. Bought new guts for the toilet, scrubbed it within an inch of its life and returned it to the bathroom with new flooring underneath. Painted the walls and installed crown moulding, which really improved the looks of the bathroom. After much deliberation and saving up of money, we bought a pedestal sink and installed it. Bought a curving shower curtain to give more room in the teeny, tiny shower. Now all we need are things to hang towels on and we'll be good to go.
Our whole house was built by a criminally negligent homebuilder whose name is mud in our tiny town because everything he builds is sleazy, cheap and poorly made. We just didn't know anything about him before we bought the house.
I feel your pain in bathroom remodelling.

Anonymous said...

You said you where going to replace the toilet because you didn't like the color. I see in the picture it's white. Did you want maybe Eggshell? lol

I'm kind of a big guy and being a big guy I have an understanding of toilets. For example they make different sized ones. Most of my family have what I consider small toilets. If you had to sit on one of these and they happen to have a cushioned seat you can't do #1 and #2 at the same time. The hole in the seat just isn't big enough and your so low you can't maneuver very well.

However they do make taller and wider toilets most of which are geared towards handicapped individuals. I was never so happy with my home purchase then when I saw the size of the throne. It was Retrofitted with a nice big toilet and hand rails as one of the previous owners was wheelchair bound.

For me size issues would be a better reason to change out a toilet as opposed to color. Well unless it was something completely different like Red or black. Now that would be cool.

Juice S. Aaron said...

The toilet isn't actually white. That's just the salmon-pink of the walls throwing off the contrast. The toilet is actually something of a light mocha color, which makes the previous owner's choice of salmon-pink the more ludicrous. We chose to change to a white toilet because we bought a white tub.