The bathroom is slowly coming along. It’s starting to look less like a pile of rubble, and more like something on its way to a delightful, spa-like environment. The former plastic shower insert that we removed a couple weeks ago had some framing and additional walls to bring down the ceiling to the height of the shower insert. I don’t know why anyone would ever design it that way. It essentially cut off all the light to the shower and made the bathroom seem much smaller and more closed in. My guess is that the plastic shower insert was a relatively quick & easy solution to create a functional shower. And when you only have one shower in your house, you can’t afford much downtime.

Our drywall guy sounded like he could take down the additional framing, but as it turns out, he had a very brief window of time to work on our bathroom, and needed us to demo that section before he could start work. Ugh. Well, not a huge deal, especially since we are resourceful and have the added benefit of having some beefy friends.

The upper framing was put together with a shit ton of nails. It looks like the person who put it together was a DIYer (no shame in that!), but they used an overabundance of long nails to really secure the crap out of the shower framing. I understand why they didn’t use screws. They are more expensive and take longer. And they weren’t building it with demolition in mind. You can see the treacherous pokey nails (and smiling menfolk) below:

Regardless, Laura papped away at the section for awhile and dismantled a good deal of it using tools & physics. Then, our brawny friends came over and added some brute strength to the process. After over 2 hours of hammering, pulling,  cursing, & bleeding, the top section was out.

The drywall guy was able to seal up the ripped up area by the vanity, seal up the peephole to the hallway, and recreate a ceiling above the shower. Looking better already!

The bathroom has good bones. It has a big window, excellent light, a huge area for the vanity/sink, and good layout. The hardware & shower in there were in dire need of replacement, however. We knew when we bought the house that we had to eventually renovate the bathroom, and what better time than before moving in? I can’t imagine trying to renovate a bathroom while living in the house. There is a half bath downstairs which we have been using while renovating, but no shower. Plus, a couple of spiders live there and we don’t want to rile them up.

We think they redid the vanity in the 1960s (1968 to be exact), and the shower area looks like it was installed in the last ten years. It was an odd, slightly cramped plastic shower liner and pan. They built onto the ceiling to bring it down so the prefab plastic liner would all fit perfectly, creating a tomb-like shower experience. Ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic. But I’m short, and it looked tiny to me. So, we pulled it all out. In addition, the shower drained slowly. That is usually a quick fix, but we had a plumber out to look at it and he noticed that there were 1.5 inch pipes leading out of the shower drain, and standard is 2 inches. So even if the drain was perfectly clean, the water would move through a narrow pipe more slowly. So that has been replaced.

So the thing is… we are pretty handy, but we don’t have any actual training on how to do all this stuff – especially plumbing. Laura helped her family build a house growing up. She got to see how it was put together. She assisted with wiring, tile, construction, etc. She’s also an excellent problem-solver and an natural engineer. I’m house-obsessed and a pretty good designer. Between that, trips to the hardware store, and Youtube videos, we have been able to figure out how to do a lot of home renovation ourselves, and learn what to outsource.

The bathroom is at the convergence of what we are willing and able to do, and what we need to hire out. We are doing all these renovations without a general contractor. This is for a couple of reasons. The first is: Good luck getting a General contractor in Portland right now! The flurry of real estate sales and credit flowing has many of the good workers backed up for weeks or months. The other reason we’re handling it ourselves is that we’re not making major changes. No big construction or moving walls. We are simply removing the finishes and fixtures and replacing them. Mostly stuff we have done before. And the last reason: saving money, of course.

This means that we are learning as we go about who does what in what order. I thought it would be obvious: the plumber updates the pipes first, then you lay tile, then drywall and paint. We’re learning it’s a little tricker than that. The plumber fixes the 2 inch pipe, says they don’t do the pan, so you call the tile/pan guy, who is two weeks out. You also find out the infinity drain you ordered on Amazon last week doesn’t work, for whatever reason, so you go buy a new one. Then, you get a bid for tile, while your drywall guy is ready to work today, but not next week. And the plumber needs to come back after the tile is in, but when will that be? You get the idea…

Here’s the checklist and status:

– Demo: removal of existing vanity, shower pan. Check!

– Prime & paint the walls (We have to wait for the drywall guy to make repairs first)

– Shower plumbing: Replace the piping behind the shower, since there was something weird installed where everything was sideways and there was a giant hole in the drywall with a plastic cover (the shower peep hole, I’ve been calling it). Check!

– Sink plumbing: the bathroom sink was piped with the incoming water coming out of the floor and the drain going into the wall. I’m told this is not standard (and makes no sense), so we had that fixed (you can’t see much, but here is the very expensive, very beautiful new plumbing on the left:

– Shower pan: When we called the plumber, they implied that they could install a new shower pan. But then they came out and said no, they do all the backend stuff but they don’t do showerpans anymore. 😐 So we called a tile guy (not an easy feet in a backed up market right now) who we found on Thumbtack and are getting this queued up

– Tiling: we were going to do this originally, but it sounds like the tile/floorpan guy will include it in a quote and heck, I bet they are faster
than we are, and time is money

– Shower glass: We are doing floor to ceiling glass shower doors, and there are installers that do just that one thing, and we’re on their list. They can’t measure or start work until the tile has been installed

– Drywall: We have a drywall guy (I’ve read in many places that drywall is one of those things that for the skills and tools involved, it’s better to hire someone)

– Sink: We have to drag in and install the vanity. We’ve got that part, as long as we get a little help from our brawny friends, since it weighs 230 lbs.

In summary, the bathroom has been a learning experience and is far from complete. The challenge has been sorting out how much we can do, what we need to get professional help for, and the other wild card: The order in which things are done. If we ever redo another bathroom (which we will, downstairs), we will get to apply the lessons. The bathroom is the most important thing right now, because we can move in with the kitchen still under construction, but the bathroom has to be 100% done first. My wife insists on being able to shower in her own home (go figure). It’s going to be a fantastic bathroom, much improved and nicer than any bathroom we’ve ever had before. But we’re not quite there yet.