The Guest Bath

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C
8/17/2004      We're expecting family in about 6 weeks so we've put off work in the living room in order to beat the guest room and it's bath into shape before they arrive.  The bathroom is the biggest problem.  Shortly after we moved in we found that Christina's bathtub, located directly above it, has a leak and it drains right onto the ceiling of this bathroom and through the exhaust vent onto the floor.  The ceiling is also sagging.
     On top of that, the wallboard is breached by cracks and a big hole and water gets in whenever we shower.  They are now buckling and stink of mold and mildew so we're expecting to be doing a little replacement work when we get to the studs.
      The floor is just old and needs to be replaced but we think this portion of the house is on a concrete slab so Chuck will be doing some tile work in there.  He did a lot of that in Florida and so the floor is the least of our worries at this point.  Knock on wood.
     With a little luck the tub will be salvageable.  It's a fairly large thing and we're hoping the decades of bad repairs on the upper edging can just be cleaned up to an acceptable level.
     The window is an old farm style window that someone painted the glass with blue oil-based paint for privacy.  It's going bye bye and we bought a replacement window at Lowe's Hardware today.
    The toilet is okay but rocks.  It isn't even bolted down so that will be another issue to deal with when the time comes.
    Beth hates the closet so that has to somehow be reconfigured.
    The vanity is staying.  We thought about buying a new one but why bother?  A little white paint and some fresh hardware and it will be just fine.  The mirror for the medicine is an eyesore, though.  It will have the glass replaced but not much more than that.
     Finally, there's the door.  Like many of the doors here it was kicked in at some point and the repair on it was apparently done by a monkey.  It's going to have to be completely overhauled and painted.
     Time to get to work.  This should be lots and lots of fun!
8/20/2004     Today was the first real day of demolition work.  This room is small so it won't be as difficult to tackle as the dining room and kitchen  but it still has it's own challenges.  The materials ran us about $550 which really isn't bad when you consider that it's a total renovation.  Using a contractor would have cost in the area of $7,000.
     The main issue we have to deal with is the mold and mildew caused by water damage but we found out the floor is one of the few areas of the house on a poured concrete slab so it's in good shape and we'll be able to use ceramic tile once we peel and scrape away all of then old layers of linoleum.
8/21/2004      It took me 6 hours to install a new window.  Six hours!  It usually takes about an hour and a half to pop a window into most any wall but this time I was thwarted and bamboozled by layer upon layer of poorly executed previous renovations and the wall was so thick a safe could have been installed in it.  This meant creating a huge window frame to accommodate a rather tiny window without making it look bulky and awkward.
     I suppose I should try to look at the bright sides of things and try to be thankful instead of complaining.  I haven't seen a single spider or centipede and the terrible swamp smells are all but gone.  The window is in and now the walls will go up.  This won't be a three day project as I'd originally hoped but I think it will still be fairly easy and fast and our future visitors won't be in fear of needing a tetanus shot when they use the bathroom.
8/22/2004      Well, we ended up deciding to do the right thing and we took the closet on the bathroom completely apart so that we could remove the last of the linoleum floor (three layers worth!) and the old masonite wallboard.  What we didn't count on was finding large areas where the drywall was soaking wet and it fell apart with a light touch.
    Okay, no problem.
    We spent hours on end tearing out anything that looked even vaguely water-damaged and then reassessed our schedule.  Instead of taking a mere three days to renovate it looks as though three weeks will be more like it with work schedules and all.
     An odd note:  as we removed the old linoleum floors we found a thin layer of water between the top and second layers.  There's no way to tell how long it's been there....yuck....but we think it may be the product of normal spills of water from getting out of the shower, etc., and it just gets through the poorly calked areas around the tub stand and continuously seeped through.  The new flooring will be ceramic tile edged with tons of caulk so that should remedy the problem.
8/23/2004      We discovered a leak in the bathroom sink directly above the bathroom we're working on.  This may be why the drywall and insulation were soaked and mildewed.  Now that it's fixed we're hoping we've seen the last of it.
    Beth spent the entire day scraping up layers of linoleum and should be done by today if all goes well.  I have some appointments this morning and will attempt to install the shower walls and fixtures by this evening.  We're all getting a little sick and tired of baths, washing hair in the kitchen sink and running upstairs to use the bathrooms.
8/26/2004      We spent most of the day ripping out the plumbing below Christina's tub and replacing it all with new materials.  The leak from her tub has caused incredible amounts of damage below and this should solve all of the problems.
     The strange part of the day goes all the way back to March 16th when we moved in.  We had discovered a huge pile of shiny, opalescent stones on the roof outside the master bedroom's sliding glass door and thought to ourselves, "What pigs!  They emptied a fish aquarium right out onto the roof."
     Looks like we were partially wrong.
     They emptied it out the door but only after they first tried to dump it down the bathtub drain.  When Chuck cut away the old galvanized piping it was filled with the stuff  his brother Tom (the plumber), who said, "Okay, let's look at another angle on this situation.  Did you ever consider that maybe that tub was the aquarium?"
     It may have been.  After all, these people were weird.  Really weird.
8/27/2004      Slow going today but we took care of a lot of critical details that will vastly improve the house.  The bathroom is on the right track in regard to being properly framed out.  There is now insulation where before there was either none at all or insufficient materials.
     Beth is almost done with chiseling up the old tile.  We wanted to have used the new tile as of this past Sunday but we never expected to run into a floor in this condition and so now the effort she has made will definitely pay off.
     And it will be nice to have a toilet on the ground floor again. 
     And a shower.  It will be nice to be able to shower again.
8/28/2004   It's amazing how at times at certain times one has to put out so much effort to get so little done.  We wanted to have a working shower.  That's all.  Just a small space where we could once again feel water hitting us in the faces.  But we had to first finish putting up the ceiling and before that could begin we needed to take care of other small issues.
     It took us about an hour just to sort it all out and properly wire everything together.  It also cost us a trip to Frederick to buy the boxes we needed.  What a waste of a day.  We ended up hanging a few framing boards and swapping out old outlets and then other issues took up the rest of our daylight hours.
      We also had to deal with Christina's bedroom heat.  For reasons we can't quite figure out, her room has been unbelievably hot, even at night.  We traced all of the vents and can't find a single reason for the lack of conditioned air but were at least able to take three steps to help.
     First, this home has what is called a 'house fan'.  It's a huge fan that draws air up through the entire house and into the attic.  The theory is that when there is no AC running you open up all the windows (including the attic's) and it's so powerful it creates a delightful breeze throughout the house and pushes all the hot air out the attic windows.  If ours worked it would be a great idea but it doesn't.  It just allows the attic's stifling heat to mingle with Christina's room's air.  It was 112 degrees here yesterday so it got pretty toasty in her room.  We put a cover on the opening and the temperature in her room immediately began to drop.
    The second issue was to get the hot air out so we placed an exhaust fan in her window.  Again, it began to get even cooler.
    The third step was covered when Beth found that Christina had placed her boom box radio right in front of her only AC register blocking off a large percentage of her air.  The room is a lot cooler this morning but a night sandwiched between two days of sweltering hot temperatures is hard to battle at even optimum conditions.  This is typical August weather for Maryland and autumn is just around the corner so there won't be many more nights like these.
8/29/2004      Still no shower.  We've decided to hold off on any more work until all of our glues and caulked edges have dried.  The fiberglass walls are in place and look very nice but there is still an incredible amount of work to do in order to connect the walls and the tub to avoid further water damage.
     Hard to say when this will start to happen as Chuck needs to get back to work at his regular job and make some money again.
9/6/2004      Labor Day weekend.  More work on the bathroom.  Tom showed up and correctly installed the shower fixtures, an act of patience we are extremely grateful for.  While the window isn't yet completed and the tub's sill is under construction, we can almost use the shower and hope to be able to in a matter of days.  So far all of the work has centered around the stall area and just being able to use it.  The rest of the room has to wait because function is the key word here.
     The sink isn't a big issue as we plan to use the old one with a few minor modifications.  The toilet will be a real pleasure to have running again but we have two others so it really all boils down to having it all ready for the relatives at this point in time.
9/7/2004      Well, the shower works, the walls are waterproofed and the tub sill is almost done. We even got some of the tile done on the floor.   The biggest bonus came when we ran out of things to do for a while as the floor set up so we went into the cellar and reset the breaker that has forced us to live with extension cords for the past 5 months.  Now we can read in bed and everything!  Pretty keen, huh?
     Hey, it may sound trivial to you but we've been bashing our shins in complete darkness every night and carrying a fluorescent lantern to use the bathroom.  This was a huge step forward for our quality of life and best of all?  No one got electrocuted in the process!
9/13/2004      We have a ceiling and a working exhaust fan.  We have a toilet that works.  We have a shower that not only works but looks really great and is totally waterproof, a good thing we've both agreed.  The lights are up and bright as the freaking sun going supernova and the fixtures need one more coat of paint.  All we need now is a toilet paper dispenser, some trim work and the closet shelves to be made and it's on to the next room.
      And yes, we realize that this has been quite enough talk about a bathroom to hold everyone over for quite a while.  Trust us, we've seen more than enough of this room ourselves.
9/20/2004     It looks as though the bathroom will be completed tomorrow.  We have a few small punch-out items to take care of and then it's on to the temporary-guest-soon-to-be-a-library- room.  We both learned a lot about renovation problems while working in the bath room.  Can't say we'll miss working in there one little bit.
9/21/2004      What a day!  The first day of autumn was rung in by some lunatic shooting someone in town and he is now holed up in his apartment with 'multiple weapons'.  The police have had him surrounded for about 10 hours at the time of this entry (10:10 pm).  Local kids were kept in school until 5:30 but other than that you'd never really know all of this was going on here in our little 'Mayberry.'
    The good news is that the bathroom is completed.
    This will be the last entry in this section of the site.