2022/02 – Time for a Soak

After way too many years of being in disarray, our main bathroom is nearing completion. Back in 2012, we had to blow out the ceiling in order to move our furnace up into the attic. Constant flooding had made it impossible to keep the ducts under the house clean and operational.

Over the years finances made it hard to budget for the remodel. I finally started working on it in 2018. I completely gutted the room, removing the ceiling, walls and floor. While I had the floor ripped out, I removed several tons of silt from under the house.

The the slow task of putting everything back started. I rewired the room since I had everything open, and then put down new plywood for the floor. Next I sheetrocked the ceiling and the walls.

Tiling was the next project, and the walls went up easier than expected. I had never tiled walls before and the way the subway tile wraps around the corners made it challenging, but I’m happy with how it came out.

It was the floor that ended up being a bitch. There’s a complete writeup of that disaster on Knowlesville.

While I was trying to decide how to fix the floor, Covid-19 came along and we were hesitant to spend any further money on the room until things settled down.

I finally decided to rip out the first floor tile and go back to using a product I was familiar with even though it meant I had to piece the border together myself.

I’m much happier with the result now, and I’m glad I just ripped out the first tile I used.

With the tile done, it was time for plumbing. I had a bit of help from Wyckoff’s Plumbing to install the sink supply lines since they are hard lines, and also to connect the antique toilet since there were some special considerations to make it work with modern plumbing. But other than that, everything you see in this photo was installed by me.

With the clawfoot moved in and connected, it was time for a well deserved soak.

I still need to finish some cabinets on the wall you can’t see, but that has to wait until I finish with Lori’s studio since that has been torn apart too long as well.