Bathroom remodel!

Almost done!

We're about 3 weeks into a complete gut of our bathroom. Down to the studs - new electrical, plumbing, window, door, etc...

(History) - house was built in 1912 - we bought it about 6 years ago - nice house - about 1700 sq ft - the wife and I first house - we've moved from room to room, gutting down to the studs and redoing it - the bathroom is 1 of 2 rooms left to be done ( next will be the last bedroom) - we've deviated a bit - did a 6 foot vinyl privacy fence one year; brick pizza oven another, flag stone patio another, etc... Bathroom is about 7ft x 5.5ft

Dad and I are pretty handy people; doing this entirely by ourselves - only had to hire out for the plumbing - I knew I needed new water pipes (they were galvanized) but when we opened the walls, we found out the old cast iron drain was cracked at an elbow so the entire thing had to come out from the 2nd floor to the basement - $2400 in plumbing (friend price) - my brothers brother in law owns a plumbing company.

I had gotten a quote to see how much it would cost to have it done and they came in around $19k and it was on me to buy the tub, toilet, vanity, lights, etc... and no where near as nice tile (tile was in the price - they do solid sheets of corian)

One thing led to another - day job was closing for a few days for remodeling, I was off for 3 days the following week for vacation anyways, so we said screw it and decided to do it. We originally were gonna try to do it on the cheap, thinking it was going to cost $3-5k (HAHAHA) but somewhere down the line we decided to go high end.

Some prices / features
Tub - American Standard (the only "cheap" part of the room - $600)
Toilet - Toto 1 piece - $800
Vanity --
Cabinet - $600 solid wood (not plywood) - stained a whitish grey
Countertop - $700 - whitish grey Quartz
Sink - Black glass vessel bowl - $400
Faucet - Kohler - $400
(tub, toilet, vanity from a local bath / kitchen vendor)
$2400 to the plumber
Tile - Travertine - $2800 worth (The Tile Shop)
Window - Pella Thermastar $130 (we've used thermastar windows in all the other rooms we've redone - good solid window)
Ceiling fan - NuTone - it's nice - theres no HVAC in this room so the fan has a fan, 1500 watt heater, light, and night light - $250 (amazon)
1 piece Shower head - rainfall shower, 2 body sprays and the tap for the tub - $250 (amazon)
Towel warmer - $250 (amazon)
Door - solid core 6 panel - $200 (from home depot) - again, matches the other ones we've installed)
Random tools (new tile saw for dad, hammer drill to bust out tile, dremel for cutting open the family room wall to get access to the pipe, random drill bits / blades, etc... probably $1000)
Free labor? priceless.

Hanging the door tonight, grout the shower tile (except the niche - short Duran tile for that, ordered to be here for tuesday) and hopefully I can take a shower in my house by Saturday instead of driving to my parents house every night - only bathroom in the house

Finish painting tonight / tomorrow; get the floor tile done sunday and clean up the incredible mess this project has made in my house.

</exhausted>

 

Nice. Our house was built in the 1920s. A bathroom remodel is on our list the next couple of years. It has the 1960s or so pink tile everywhere. Walls, floor, tub etc-- pink everywhere. And I hate pink.

 

Wow! Good for you!!! Our house was built in 1987, but is time for some serious upgrades... bathrooms being a part of "plan". I'm not "handy" in the least, so ours will be with a contractor. I've been watching those home improvement, flipping, remodel programs lately and when they show the price to do some of the work, it sure seems awfully inexpensive. I just know we're in a for a surprise!!!

 

You're hired! What an undertaking - It's great you and your dad have the skills to do this together.
Looks amazing - can't wait to see this beauty when it's finished.
What was the biggest challenge? What was the most unexpected thing you had to deal with on a 100+ year old house?
I'd venture a guess the electrical was a challenge...

 

Or climate control

 

My wife's parents house is about that old and we decided to have a furnace put in for them by surprise and her dad was not happy when he found out. Lol I thought he would be happy he would not have to chop wood anymore in the winter but nope

 

@Geogran The biggest challenge was actually in the kitchen - first room remodeled about a month after moving in. When we started moving in, the wife noticed a smell in the cabinets - so the wife and mom went to work; trying all kinds of stuff from basic soap to Odd-ball to painting the inside of the cabinets with a polyurathan. Not able to get the smell out, we decided to remodel it. During demolition, come to find out the water lines to the sink we leaking under the sink cabinet (they were copper) - so thats where the smell was from.

Then, pulling the floor, there were no less then 5 layers! The pergo they put on it last, vinyl tile, some sort of carpet material was in there, the original hard wood floors were still in there - every time someone did something to the kitchen, they never took the old stuff out first.

Once the floor was pulled, we had to address the sub floor. We went with a 16 inch porcelain tile in the kitchen. Sometime ago, they had put an addition on the back of the kitchen - added about 10x10 ft to it. From 1 corner of the addition, to the opposite corner of the kitchen, the floor level was off by an inch and a half. So - had to build up the floor with concrete board / thin set to make it as level as possible across the entire space (25 feet wide total) so no tiles would crack - and 6 years later now, none have.

I had hired an electrician when we were moving in also to do the main panel - there were fuses, so they ran new mains to the house, new breaker box and reconnected everything. I'm actually more comfortable with electrical then plumbing so electrical has never been a problem to do. It's the only electrical I've hired out for.

Past that, the demolition of the tile in this bathroom is the most difficult. Took me 4 days of demolition. I was expecting the usual mess of dealing with plaster and lath, but when I got to the inch and a half of concrete behind the tile, that killed me. I pounded away at it for 2 days with a hammer until I just said screw it, went and got a hammer drill. Hammer drill helped a lot.

The previous owner just... didn't give a crap. Theres drywall over plaster and lath everywhere cause they didn't want to take down the plaster and lath and start fresh; nothing is square in the entire house - the bathroom is out of square by almost an inch. There (was) aluminum wire running into copper wire outlets (big no no). The house appeared nice when we bought it, but you open a wall and start finding nothing but problems.

 

Nice project there!
The most valuable part is the time spent with your Dad!
I enjoy working with my Dad as much as I can. Like you said, you can't beat the free labor. Of course, I provide my Dad with as much Coca-Cola as he needs on the worksite...

RICHARD

 

You have great taste. Looking great.

 

Wow.....beyond impressed. Awesome that you and your dad are so talented in remodeling. Such a huge cost savings and quality time together. Hope to see the finished product.

 

@lsiunsuex
thanks for that info - many many years ago my dad was quite good at building and renovating the types of things you describe here but with few/no power tools and I always enjoyed watching and learning about stuff - not that his skills rubbed off on me. Sometimes there were surprises behind the walls, and lots of wallpaper layers, even newspapers, lol, no dead bodies thank goodness - so reading this thread brought back fond memories

That is the scary part that you can be glad you uncovered along with the leaky pipes. This house will truly become 'your home' once you finish - nice to see an old house being restored and enjoyed - hopefully for another hundred years

 

Floor on top of floors in layers -- we had that too. In one room. Carpet, on top of carpet, on top of laminate, on top of large tile glued onto a wood floor. We stopped there, got an estimate for a floor refinisher and he wouldn't touch the job. We decided to put down a wood laminate and then maybe some day go back and have a new wood floor put in.

 

Nice to have friends and family to help you . When you start ripping into old houses like that you never know what you might find,you hope its money that someone hid behind the walls but normally its somebody's half assed job that you have to correct.Been there and done that over the years.Good Luck.

 

I LOVE that you're breathing new life into a 1912 home, and giving it tons of love and a beautiful facelift.

Its alway's so sad when a historic/established place goes unloved, and you are making this one the jewel it once was, kudos!

 

Thanks for all the comments guys!

Some have mentioned restoring old homes and not tearing them down. We've tried our best to do that over the years. Obviously bad electrical, plumbing, etc... can't be avoided - that needs to come out - and IMO the windows as well - they were nothing special (the old aluminum windows with single pane glass)

But somethings we've kept - (some pictures attached) - we sanded down and restored the original hard wood floors; it took about a month to strip down and stain the staircase railing - had about 3 coats of paint on it.

Few other pictures of the work done in the kitchen, the pizza oven I built, patio, patio fireplace and fence.

The picture of the brick work surrounded by the wood is the pizza oven - was my first masonry project. The shell was there (the brownish red brick) and inside (the light beige fire brick) was an opening with a gas grill in it. The grill was rusted through so I pulled it, built a base and built the pizza oven into it. First brick work I ever did; watched all the youtube videos I could on laying brick and building pizza ovens for a few weeks, and just gave it a go! I heat it for about an hour and a half - gets over 900 degrees F and takes about a minute and a half to make a pizza.

The picture of the brick work by the flagstone was inspired by a house I saw on houzz.com - the blue wall is 3 or 4 rows of cinder block on a foundation - planting beds inside with the fireplace in the middle. Took about 2 months in total over a summer. Fence was professionally installed. The blue has since been changed to a medium beige (no idea what the wife was thinking with the blue, haha)

The kitchen cabinets are actually stained black - about 4 or 5 coats of an ebony stain, not painted. And the countertop is granite tile with the bull nose cut right into it. We're actually feeling a little guilty we spent so much money on the bathroom; back when we re-did the kitchen, we went with a relatively cheap cabinet (from home depot) - they still look new, we take good care of them, but we are remotely considering pulling the cabinets and putting in something nicer. Good thing we tiled under the cabinets! People often cut corners; put the cabinets in first, then tile to the cabinet. If you tile below the cabinet; you can pull the cabinets later and not have to worry about new ones matching where the floor ended.

I often tell people - as a web developer, sitting in front of computer for to many hours a day, it's nice to build something with your hands and not have it go away when someone pulls the power cable, haha.

I'll post a few more pictures of the bathroom later in the week - floor came out absolutely beautiful yesterday - we used a Versailles pattern. Tonight - grout, get the new toilet in, finish the wall behind the toilet (couldn't get to it without removing it), trim and put the door back on then paint it. Really hoping the vanity comes this week and a local company is coming to quote the glass shower door thursday. It'll be expensive I'm sure, but it would be such a shame to hide all that tile with a shower curtain. The wife found a beautiful black trimmed mirror to match the black glass sink from Pottery Barn as well as the usual hand towel holder, glass shelves for above the toilet, etc... (it's a pottery barn / crate and barrel house for sure, haha). You think a project is almost over; that burning money is done and then you realize you still need so much more stuff.

 

Place looks really great ,you do nice work.

 

Good job on that bathroom. The only thing missing is a urinal. No scolding about leaving the seat up. LOL

 

Happy Labor Day Weekend! Worked strait through it

Done - to the point where now I'm waiting on the countertop, sink and faucet to come in - hopefully this week. Have to order the glass shower door today; that'll take 2-3 weeks to come in. Just need to sand the corner behind the toilet and paint it - one of these nights this week when I have nothing better to do. The cabinet is so close to do the door just because we don't want to cut the holes for the plumbing until the countertop comes in - so it's away from the wall about 6-8 inches.

Bonus project - my brother, who is not handy, at all - hired a contractor last year to redo a sunroom off the back of his house. Long story short, a year later, the contractor isn't finishing the project so it fell to dad and I to get it done. I finished the drywall, dad and I did the tile floor this weekend; and I have to go back to grout tonight. This was my first time actually laying tile; I've known how to do it, but I've never actually done it myself - dad is the tile pro. Easy but very labor intensive - my hands are all swollen Came out nice thought I think. Trying to get it done before this coming weekend for one of his daughters birthday parties - grout tonight, he can paint tomorrow and I'll finish up the outlets while he's painting.

With the shower door I'm ordering as soon as they open, I'll have broken $17,000 on this bathroom. The quote I got before we decided to do it came out to $19,000 and it was on me to purchase the vanity, toilet, tub, fixtures, etc... and I have much nicer tile then they would of installed and I'm not sure what they would of done about all the bad plumbing. Only labor I paid out for was the plumber, will get dad / mom a nice gift (or take them to vegas next year - they want to go) and the shower door people install the door themselves.

So happy it's almost over !

 

Seems like you guys worked a lot, I can see that in the above photos. You guys could have taken some help from a professional like this for your renovation process. This could have saved your time and energy and they would have taken care of it.