Demolition Day

A big project like the master bath requires major demolition. Not only did all the fixtures, flooring, wallboard, and part of a wall need to come out, but our kitchen ceiling below ultimately needed to be completely removed to expose all of the plumbing that needed to be rerouted to accomplish the proper placement of the new plumbing in the master bath.

Another big obstacle was the soffit in the kitchen. We did not want it and our kitchen remodel would call to remove it. So, given that it was completely filled with plumbing and electrical it needed to be removed before we could continue with the master bath project.

Here is what it looked like:

I'm not sure they could have fit more plumbing or electrical into that soffit.

Soffit ran all the way into the eat-in area of the kitchen over the sliding glass doors. Ugh.

Steven is rerouting plumbing. He had already moved most of what was in the soffit and had torn much of the framing of the soffit out. We still had more demolition to go, but that could wait until we started the kitchen.

The bathroom was completely torn out as well by this time:

Wall separating the closet from the bathroom was cut back to create opening which would later turn into a hallway. That metal air duct in the wall on the left side of the photo had to be moved. That was where our new door was going.

This was the rough-in on the shower and some plumbing work was already in place. 

That air duct you see in the above photo could not be moved. We didn't really notice it was completely in the way of our original shampoo box plan. The drywall installers were coming in the morning, so this resulted in a late night design session to rework the placement of all the shampoo boxes and the hand-held shower as well. Glad we noticed the problem in time to fix it.

New doorway is framed in and rough-in electrical is in place. The T-wall is also framed in. To the left of it is where my vanity and sink will go.

Rough-in plumbing is also in place. This is where Alan's vanity and sink will go.

One of our ideas was to install recessed medicine cabinets over each sink. This did turn out to be a great idea. But, one of our lessons learned was not to frame them in advance as you see being done here. You just cannot judge center at this stage. Trust me.

The plumbing took a long time to complete. So much rerouting was necessary both because we moved and upgraded every fixture in the bathroom and we wanted to remove that soffit in the kitchen to clear the way for that renovation. Our plumber was also limited to evenings and weekends due to his full time plumbing job. Our carpenter, also our neighbor, was likewise limited in schedule, but there was much less carpentry work needed. Finally, we did get to the drywall stage.

We elected to use green board due to its moisture resistance. While unnecessary, we just continued it on the bedroom side of the wall.

The shower was framed out in cement board.

This is the side where my vanity and sink would go.

The new entry and hallway was shaping up well.

The window was one of the few elements to remain where it was.

While all the plumbing was being done, use of our bedroom was impacted. We normally let our four cats into the room with us at night, but we had to curtail that because the bathroom was all open, including some of the floor for a time. I could just see one of those cats getting electrocuted, falling in between the wall studs, or even jumping down into the kitchen from one of those holes in the floor. Yikes.

This situation got Alan to thinking that their room is right next to ours and we could put in a door so that we could remove all the kitty litter boxes, food, and water out of our room completely. I was resistant at first. It would cost money, tear up the other side of the bedroom, and would it really fit and look right in the other room? After a little testing of the spacing, I warmed to the idea. It turned out to be brilliant. It did tear things up for a while, but it is perfect.

The demolition process began on the new door to the cat room.

We still had the radiant heat to go in the bathroom and closet floors and then all the tile work for the shower and floor. The cabinets that we ordered at the beginning of the project were delivered and in the garage, so they were ready to do also. Stay tuned.

Big Plans

I promised to post about the living room, but the photos weren't quite right and now I can't get into that room for a while because of the work we are doing on the first floor. Instead I will share the plan for the master bathroom, one of the two big renovation projects that we queued up after we made some initial progress on the smaller projects--and got rid of all that pink paint.

Take a look at what we started with in the master bath, a disaster:

Only one sink and small vanity cabinet. The seated vanity is nice, but it is too high and there is no room to fit a stool in the room anyway.

All fixtures were gray and there was flowered wallpaper everywhere. This tub took up all the space in the room. And, the toilet was wedged in the corner. 

Shower was small and dark.

This is the master bedroom before we moved in. The bathroom door is behind the open door to the bedroom on the left. This configuration just didn't work. These doors were always in the way of each other. The other door goes to the walk-in closet.

Walk-in closet was decent size, but not configured to hold much.

I really couldn't wait to get rid of the wallpaper in the bathroom, so we removed it when we removed all the other wallpaper. The wallpaper removal revealed some ugly surprises:

Apparently that tight space for the toilet didn't work for the previous owners. It got wet--often--and we found all this mold under the wallpaper.

We also found mold under the wallpaper by the shower door.

Once we determined that we did not have any current water leakage we began planning for this space while we worked on public rooms downstairs. We would ultimately have to use this bathroom as is for 7 months before we were ready to start demolition.

Here is the plan we developed:

This plan includes placement of all plumbing fixtures, lighting, and cabinetry. Circles with crosshairs indicate ceiling lights; circles with double lines indicate outlets, S indicates switches.

Our plan addresses all the problems with the space. We eliminated the doors to the bathroom and closet and replaced them with a double door on the center of the bedroom wall. We removed part of the wall that separated the closet and the bathroom and put in a T wall that would create a hallway instead.

We also chose a larger shower and no tub so that we could get two separate sink vanities, a seated vanity, and tall cabinets, significantly improving the working space and storage space.

Another concession we made was to have the toilet out in the room. There was not enough square footage in the space to allow for a reasonably sized room for the toilet while meeting all of our other more important objectives.

This floorplan did require that we replace the perfectly good hardwood floor in the closet since the floor needed to continue seamlessly from one room into the other.

We also decided on water-based radiant heat in the entire space. You can't install radiant heat unless you remove existing flooring, so now would be the perfect time. Also, this allowed us to remove the baseboard heat units in the bathroom and closet, which gave us more room for cabinetry. This heating method keeps the otherwise very cold tile warm under foot. It is also a very efficient heating method, particularly in colder climates. It made the floor higher than the hardwood in the bedroom, but it is less than 1" and with the threshold at the doorway it feels perfectly natural. The fabulous heat is well worth it!

Our plan was also to create a spa feel in the space. So we chose travertine tile with glass and shell mosaics to create a neutral palette. We also chose brushed nickel fixtures. The only color in the room would be paint color, towels, and accessories.

Come back and see how this project unfolds.