Bath Demo and Construction

She Says:

I was so eager to gut this room that I neglected to take any demo pictures.  So just imagine me ineffectually swinging a sledgehammer amid a haze of drywall dust.

Here's the whole room gutted.  In this photo, we've already built the header for the window and put it in place.

HoneyDo wired the electrical.  We replaced the vanity light with two sconces and added LED can lights above the vanity and shower.

And here's the exterior wall all snug and insulated:

The reason for the rocking toilet was, once again, water damaged, rotted flooring.  Left to its own devices, one of these days it would have just rocked its way right down into the crawl space.

Okay, maybe I'm being overly dramatic.  I guess the floor joists would have prevented a free fall.  But we added extra blockers on either side of the repair just to be sure.

Thankfully, the vanity had absorbed all its own leaks over the years, and the only areas that needed work were around the base of the toilet and the drain under the tub.  The rotten areas were easily removed and patched.

He Says:

So bathrooms are pretty important for quality of life.  Even though this house has another functional bathroom, it's nasty, and we want out of it.  So, we decided to simplify the reno of this room by not moving the location of any of the plumbing or venting.  If we were going to move any fixtures, it would require new access holes in wall studs and the roof for the vent stacks.  We'll save that fun for the next bathroom.

Instead, we replaced the water supply plumbing with PEX.  It's not a good idea (if you are a DIYer) to close up a plumbing installation behind a wall before you test it.  With PEX, it is easy and cheap to install a test plug at any point in the system temporarily.  With our handy dandy water manifold system, we can pressurize any room in the house individually for testing, which is awesome.

Okay, next, let's put up some walls...