For as long as I can remember, my wife has wanted a chandelier over the bath tub. Finally made that happen yesterday. She gets migraines and likes to sit in the tub when she gets them, so this is on a dimmer along with the light that backlights the stained glass.
So I’ve got perhaps the only bathroom in town with mood lighting.
Bow-chicka-bow-wow!
I hope there’s room for two in that tub.
That is beautiful!
The bathrooms from hell chronicles
My uncle started remodeling his bathrooms with no clue what he was doing. It’s now 4 years later and the bathrooms are still not functional when I come into the picture.
So my contract is to fix the damage done and get the project moving. There are two full bathrooms here
Here’s what I walked into two months ago:
First step was to get all the plumbing pex lines in and rough plumbing in.
Notice the half wall seen above. I tied the studs into the floor joists so it wouldn’t wobble
Fast forward two months later to today. I only work part time on this btw.
Todays update- got all the hardibacker up on the walls and custom cut this angled walk up curb to fit snugly against the custom shower pan
Shouldn’t Rule #1 be “One bathroom at a time!”? Just so you have one operational?
Or does he have others?
There are 3 bathrooms upstairs. So he went down to sharing one shower between four adults and a toddler. The wife has already gone through the entire grief cycle anger denial bargaining acceptance
Seeing progress has given her new hope
Doing a “job” for family is risky.
My older sister hired a nephew (Architect/Construction) for a bathroom and kitchen job a few years back.
€100k later and the job was still not finished with lots of “remediations” left.
She ended up firing the guy after he asked for more money to fix the issues (due to his own screw ups)
End result was she paid another €30k to another contractor to get it done properly.
Shockingly…my older sister and nephew do not talk anymore.
I’ve seen people get thier first few months of experience and think, I can do this on my own! But they haven’t worked long enough to understand to see first hand how fast a job can go sideways. So they jump into thier first big contract and get wrecked.
I’ve also seen people who rip people off and run quickly after. There’s a lot of criminals in construction. Thiefs.
The people with experience and integrity are the most hesitant to commit to anything. And they never do business with family. Favors yes. But contracts no.
With indoor remodels, you know that someone is always going to be very upset at least once before the job is over. No matter how good the contractor is.
I thought I was going to start my own remodeling business down here but it’s too exhausting taking shit from the customer while you’re trying to solve challenging construction problems
i am this close to redoing our basement bathroom myself. it does not get used at all and barely has in all our years in this home. prior experience remodeling? none!
we hired pros to do the main floor (down to studs and back) and now the upstairs bath (same down to studs and in progress). following the rule of always have one around.
I figure, we have the dumpster. can’t make the unused and unusable basement unit worse i figure. I do have friends w skills who will guide stuff for in-kind booze
Is it just a bathroom and vanity?
You can definitely pull it off focusing on one piece at a time
Booze will have to be paid in full at the start of contract just fyi
Are you in Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh has a lot of basement potties
Especially in old homes. My house (Kansas, built 1912) had rough plumbing for a basement bathroom. We ripped out the hot/cold pipes and the toilet drain is capped.
Minnesota, not Pittsburgh.
It is a 3/4 bath. Has a shower. The current level of decor is brute utilitarian from a long ago era. I feel I can 3/4 ass my way through it and make it better.
And booze is always paid early and repeated. Booze for all who want it.
Are you leaving the layout alone? If you’re not tearing it to the studs and re-piping and re-wiring it all, then a 3/4 bath is much more doable. Especially if you don’t need things to be top notch. Like a prefab shower pan saves a lot of labor vs a custom tile pan like lit is doing, and you can go to Home Depot or Menard’s or whatever and get a vanity with a stone top and sink all ready to install.
The one thing I might hire out if you don’t have experience is tile, if that’s what you want for flooring and/or shower walls. You can watch a lot of videos and maybe get it ok, but you’ll likely spend a LOT of time and wind up with something that’s really only 6.5/10 done right.
Otherwise, you can totally demolish the old one, install a shower pan, vanity, new lighting, paint, new towel bars and a TP holder, shower doors are easy, replacing faucets and drains isn’t too bad. If there’s no vent stack there (common for basements) add an air admittance valve when you redo the sink trap.
I did a similar remodel at our last house, decent stuff but everything I got was from a big box store, didn’t change the layout. Did a whole master bath in about 8 weeks, just nights and weekends. Compared to the fully custom bath I just did, where I hired out a lot of the work and it still took nine months.
Yes to what mathman said.
Yeah this being only my third bathroom or so, I’m bringing in a tile guy. There’s zero chance I’m attempting my first shower tile job with this much complexity. They will finish in 2 days what will take me three stressful weeks to attempt. Keyword attempt. I’ve tiled floors but the skill gap is very wide between a general contractor and a tile guy.
But I’m going to watch and help them tile so I can pick up some things
And booze is always paid early and repeated. Booze for all who want it.
And it’s best served early in the morning before they get up on the roof
I’ve never dreamed that big!
same layout. nothing changing for plumbing or electrical. just remove all the old and replace w the new. prefab everything is the goal! I’d install a porto-let down there if I could get it serviced. I don’t care. it would be nicer than what is there now
Ez pz. Take it one step at a time
New Shower first
Then get the toilet and vanity and flooring out
Time to paint
Then new flooring
Then a new toilet and vanity on top of the new flooring
Update: got the hardibacker cut for the flooring
Almost done with this nightmare
You want to use more whole pieces of hardi board for fewer seams but I was getting rid of scraps
If you can find the diamond back fiberglass substrate, it is less mess and less weight, big fan. Do love the Go Board in the shower.
Go boards can go four times faster than cement boards. It’s so easy to work with. But it is 3x the price
