Welcome to week 2 of our hall bathroom One Room Challenge! As with most DIY projects, theres a period of ‘it gets worse before it gets better’ and that’s week 2! In case you missed the before photos and mood board for this space, you can catch up with the week 1 post.
Just to recap, we started with our bland 1970s hall bath and will be bringing it into 2022 to match our Modern Ranch aesthetic. (Or, what we hope will be a Modern Ranch aesthetic when we are done renovating our house)
Demo
Since this space is a typical 5′ x 8′ bathroom, demo was pretty straight forward. My father-in-law actually did most of the demo himself while he was here visiting. We removed all of the drywall and material surrounding the shower to open the walls and check for water damage. This also allowed us to insulate all of the walls.
Thankfully, there were no major surprises during demo. We also removed the ceiling in order to add a new exhaust fan, which we vented through the roof. Our house is slab on grade, so the plumbing runs through our concrete slab and up through the walls. Most of the plumbing is in good shape, so we only had to update the end of each line, with the exception of the shower/tub plumbing.
Plumbing Rough-In
Oh, and did I mention we kept the original tub? You know what they say, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ The tub is in pretty good shape and Andrew really didn’t want to mess with the drain plumbing that would be required with a new tub. With the walls open, there was enough room to see the drain plumbing is working properly. So, we started with replacing the tub overflow plate and drain assembly.
The tub drain kit I bought to match our tub and shower fixtures came with a drain stopper made for a 1 1/2″ connection. Apparently, in 1977, tubs were not installed with this size plumbing. At least, not in our house. Luckily, we make about 12 trips to the hardware store each weekend, so Andrew picked up a universal drain stopper at Home Depot with the same chrome finish as the other plumbing fixtures.
Next, we replaced the tub and shower plumbing from the slab up. Each shower/tub fixture requires a specific mixing valve, so all of this had to be replaced to accommodate our new fixtures. We also changed the height of these fixtures, moving them all up, because it seems this bathroom was originally designed for someone less than 5 feet tall.
Tile and Other Prep
After we roughed in the plumbing, Andrew installed insulation. It’s not necessary to insulate interior walls, but we like to in bathrooms to help with sound attenuation. We prefer that bathroom sounds stay in the bathroom and not carry into other rooms, if you know what I mean. Then we closed up the walls. We used tile backer board for the shower surround and lower half of the sink wall (anywhere there will be tile), and green board for the remaining walls and ceiling.
The cutout pictured above will house a mirrored medicine cabinet. It just barely clears that PVC vent pipe so we were able to leave the vent pipe alone. Thats a win in our book!
Next, Andrew covered the seams on the tile backer walls to ensure a level surface when applying the next step. For the remaining walls, he simply taped and floated.
Waterproofing
Which leads us to waterproofing. Some people say the tile backer board is enough when it comes to waterproofing. And you can buy paint-on waterproofing to seal the seams in that case. But we went the extra mile and installed Schluter Kerdi waterproofing membrane just to be on the safe side.
This was quite the project for us as we have never used this product and there is definitely a learning curve. If not done properly, Schluter does not guarantee it’s actually waterproof, so we had to take our time and make sure we installed it correctly. It was very difficult to get the membrane perfectly smooth and level, which is clearly advantageous when you are planning to lay tile on top of it. Thats why prep work is so important! It makes the jobs further down the line easier – tiling on a smooth and level surface is much easier than tiling on a bumpy and uneven surface.
The shower niche was a whole other step that gave us a run for our money, but we finally prevailed. This was one of those “how hard can it be?” situations that you go into with a lot of confidence, then realize you were a little naive. But by the time you figure this out, you’re too far in to stop. The only way out, was through. But I will say, we filed this away as “consider hiring out next time.”
And now this room is ready for tile! We even hosted a few guests after this point and temporarily re-installed the toilet just so we all weren’t trying to share one bathroom. 🙂
Renovations take time, especially when you DIY most of the projects. And we believe in celebrating regardless if our house isn’t “done.” Our guests didn’t care that we had a quarter-finished bathroom. They still enjoyed themselves and we all had a blast.
You can always see other ORC participants on the One Room Challenge blog page here. And if you want to follow along with our renovation in real time, I’ll be on instagram @elleandjaydesign sharing all our successes and failures as they happen.
