A wee bit of progress..

We've been working on the bathroom every day that Dug is on vacation and we are seeing progress. We are in the building-back-up stage. Finally! The main reason we gutted our bathroom in the first place was because we had some water issues. The bathtub/shower had been put together poorly and it was leaking into our basement. Not good. The linoleum had some discoloration from water damage, the floor plan was less than stellar and our toilet had seen much brighter days. Oh, and we were using an adjustable wrench to turn the hot water on and off and the shower drain was slower than molasses in a blizzard.

side story-
When you think about things that can be devastated by children, one's first thought does not go to the toilet. But, alas, toilets are not impervious to my young ones. The porcelain throne's first injury was dealt by my oldest daughter. The tank lid didn't sit fully on the tank because the toilet was built in too close to the wall. (One example of the faulty floor plan.) The back side of the lid sat on the tank edge. Daughter #1 leaned on it in a funny way and it fell off. I think she was 3 or 4 at the time. It broke in two pieces. Dug fixed it with epoxy, but didn't realize the tube was for gray and not white. So our poor, white toilet had a jagged gray scar on its tank lid. Injury part deux occurred when Daughter #2 dropped a large glass candle holder into the poor toilet. It knocked out a hole about the size of my index finger in the bottom of the bowl, which proceeded to empty its contents onto the floor. The "upside" was that it had been recently flushed. I was so grateful. Odds like that don't come my way every day. So prior to the gutting, the john had two scars: a toilet's equivalent of a knife slash and gunshot wound. Poor thing. He never saw it coming.)
-end of side story

back to main story:

For defining purposes, when I say gutted, I mean gutted. The only things left standing are the studs and floor. The linoleum and sub-floor had been removed so we are standing on the actual floor boards, which, if removed, would leave a gaping hole into the basement. So, what do we do? Why remove them, of course. Not all, just a few. Some of the floor boards and part of the framing boards had rotted from the leak. With the kitchen wall gone, we had a hole from the kitchen through the bathroom, down into the basement. The picture of my kids peering down from the kitchen counter was taken by me while I was standing in the basement, looking up through the bathroom floor. Or, more correctly, where the bathroom floor formerly was located. They think this whole renovation thing is pretty fun.

Side note: My youngest son, who is three, does not remember there ever being a bathroom there. He wasn't yet two when we destroyed it. In his mind, having a gutted, non-working room in your house is completely normal. Wierd, huh?

Today we fixed the floor. It was so cool. It was progress. We took what was once a hole and made it whole again. (I just reread that, and that's just funny.) What accomplishment. Even though it was small in the grand scope of the entire project, it was still movement forward. And I'm all for forward momentum...

Here are a couple pictures of the beautiful fresh wood stuffs. The first one is from inside the bathroom. We put the new piece of floor in and replaced the missing framing 2x4 along the base of the wall.


This second one is from the basement looking up. You can see where we had to put in 2x4 pieces to attach and shore up the replacement piece.


That's all for now...I'll keep you posted.

Vacation time is over!

We officially ended our Christmas vacation today. If yesterday was a do-nothing day, today had to be a do-something day. And what did we do? Why work on our bathroom, of course.

A refresher: Our bathroom is gutted. We need to fix it. Refresher ended.

As Dug was looking at the bathroom wall that the sink plumbing had to go through, he realized that the built-in spice rack shelf thing in our kitchen had to go. (See picture above.) The shelves were literally up against the bathroom wall, effectively closing off the between-stud area.

Unfortunately, our walls are lathe and plaster. Not too conducive to specific area removal. The lathe (little wooden boards running parallel to the floor and ceiling) are the "ribs" of the wall. The wet plaster is smeared all over it, making sure it gooshes through the gaps in the lathe so that when it dries, it's holding on tight. It's a sturdy wall and has a great texture, but that's where the pleasantries end. If you try to break off a piece of plaster, it breaks in highly irregular pieces. If you pull a piece of lathe free, it removes the support for the plaster and it can just fall off the wall. Any sort of trauma, even hammering nails, can cause the plaster to let go of the lathe and become unstable. So if we wanted to just remove this one piece of the wall, the violence of the act effectively destabilizes the entire wall. Huge cracks appear. It's not a pretty sight. So what could we do?

More demolition! I, for one, love demolition. It has always been a dream of mine to go to Pleasure Island with Pinnocchio and destroy stuff with all the bad boys. I think it would be worth it, even if I was turned into a donkey. Dug, on the other hand, hates demolition. It's messy and it is destructive. He prefers cleanliness and building. What is that they say? Opposites attract? In the words of Bethany, "Fo Sho!"

So to build the bathroom, we needed to tear some more stuff down. But with Dug around, it has to be in an orderly fashion. Which is probably best. If I was left to my own devices, we'd probably have the authorities knocking on our door, condemning the place. With Dug at the helm, not only would the entire process be systematic and organized, but at the end of the day, we wouldn't have much mess to clean up either. He's a clean-as-you-go kind of boy.

(He's right, you know. It is easier to clean as you go. You just do a little at a time. Where with me, the end is a huge disaster that takes forever to clean. So props to the big guy, I was able to make dinner about thirty minutes after we finished. But my way is soooo much more fun!)

Before:After:
The picture has those jagged edges because it is a blending of nine photos! I wanted to get the entire area but I couldn't get back far enough. Isn't Photoshop cool?! Notice how much more you can see compared to the "before" photograph.
So that's what we did today. Sounds a little counter-productive, but you've got to do what you've got to do. I think it's a bit of wisdom we can all take to heart: Sometimes to fix your bathroom, you've got to knock down 1/2 your kitchen wall.