OH, You Better Watch Out Boys for the Remod that Ate the Bathroom

(With mea culpas to the esteemed songwriters of "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago")


When it was first put in well over 30 years ago, it was put in over a two-week period, by a bunch of older folks who had good intentions, but extremely limited resources. They may well have rolled their eyes or waggled their eyebrows in amusement when my eventual mother-in-law told them there was no way she'd move into this house (yes, this house has been in the family for at least three generations) if she was forced to use the outhouse, but they accomodated the new bride...and they used what they had on hand. There was no subflooring, everything was sitting on particle board, which, when the pipes burst a few years back, warped (that was the "good news") or outright disintegrated into sawdust and vapor (and that was the bad news). No attempt was made then to, you know, keep the insulation in place (or even get the right kind of insulation) to begin with, so they just laid it between the beams, and then, of course, it just fell out and fell apart on the ground below. You couldn't help noticing the warped floor, and we noticed a few questionable places in the floor, but we didn't know the extent of the imaginary flooring until we took up the sheet vinyl on the floor, and nearly died of shock. So we had to gut it all. The good news is that while the bracing beams may have some minor water damage, they are still very strong and sturdy.



The Old Bathroom -->

Project Began on Thursday Evening -- removing shelving
Taking out the Floor began on Friday Morning, 7:15 a.m. -- ended at 10:30 a.m.



Reinstalling the insulation, subflooring and another layer of flooring took the rest of the day.




Friday Evening, we had a
"working toilet" in the bathroom.

Thankfully, we didn't have to actually use it.

Saturday:

We lost six hours on this day...intially due to broken pieces ( the bathtub and original backsplash paneling were damaged right out of the box) and then later to my decision to scrap the backsplash panels altogether...they darkened the room too much and we would have had to damage the panels to get our window back in play. In the end, it worked out much better.
By Saturday Evening at 10:30 p.m., I called Mom to tell her that we officially had a REAL working toilet. And then a gasket popped off of this valve and we had water everwhere. Gack!!!!