Bathroom Saga

Our bathroom is almost done.

It has needed remodeling since we moved in about 4 years ago. 

At the time, we knew it had old tile on the floor that was broken and missing in spots, the floor around the toilet had been taken out and replaced, but with no tile on it.  The toilet was a piece of work.  It has leaked at different time.  At one point when it was leaking, I was trying to figure out were the leak was coming from and discovered that  the  wall behind the toilet was sopping wet behind the tiles and took out a 1 1/2 foot square of tile and plaster.  I'm not exactly sure where it was leaking at that point, but we replaced all the insides of the tank and put new bolts and washers to bolt the tank on.  That seemed to fix it.  Once it was the wax ring that needed replacing and it dripped sewage into the basement, we fixed that.  Then for about the last year, it has flooded the floor around the toilet every time the bowl filled with new water.  We don't know what was broken, but it would seep out from around the base of the toilet, run to the wall and drip down into the basement.  I had a bin down there to catch the water that was icky from running through the wood, though it was clean when it came out of the toilet.  That worked until Zelda got old enough to discover how fun it was to throw things into the water.  Luckily the basement still has a cement floor with a drain in it.

We knew the toilet and floor needed replacing and the wall behind needed patching, but we also wanted a new sink, bath tub, recessed medicine cabinet and turning the door around so it swung out.  We were planning on keeping the blue tile since it seemed to be in really good shape, that way we could keep the cost down a bit.  There was one wall of tile that we didn't want to keep, so I was going to take the tile off of that wall, clean it up (undiluted Simple Green worked wonders getting 50 year old glue off the backs of them) and use it to replace the tiles that would come off around the tub and the hole in the wall by the toilet.  

It  didn't work out that way.  When the contractor  opened the wall around the tub,  this is what he found

The wall was filled with moisture ant damage and rotten wood from leaks in the gutter and around the window.   The wall had to be completely rebuilt.

He also had to cut out some of the sub floor that was rotted away.

Since all the walls were open, we had all the plumbing updated as well.

It took a lot longer than we were planning, about 4 weeks total and that is our only bathroom, so we had the Honey Bucket in the driveway.  I appreciate indoor plumbing now.

 All that is left is us painting and putting up hardware, a little trim and a mirror.

(Oh, and getting our gutters fixed so they don't leak into the wall any more).

Here is the mostly finished project

We love our new bathroom!

By the way Russell Thomas of Evolve Construction did a fabulous job!

You can see by the picture.

Some of the things I loved were that he paid attention to the little details that make the project look really nice and when I didn't like the look of the lay of the tiles, he redid them how I wanted.  

His number is (206) 306-3433.