We've had a problem. We've been dealing with it, but it's still a problem. I tried to put off dealing with it until after the Umstead 100, but it wouldn't wait. So Easter weekend I had a day off from work, and Kelley and I decided to go for it. We had a toilet that was sinking into the floor. I thought it would be an easy 3 day project, just pop out the toilet, replace half a sheet of plywood under those tiles and get to grouting. What we found was quite shocking.
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| That's a lot of rotten subfloor |
We started digging a bit deeper (literally) into the subfloor to find rotten joists all the way down. Before you know it I was in over my head. Not literally this time, there's only about 18" of crawl space down there, our house is really old. But I knew enough to know when it was time to call in a professional.
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| That is insulation and a hole where the toilet was. |
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| After the contractor ripped out the tub and all joists |
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| even the closet had to go |
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| New joists going in |
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| The whole space is open now! |
We decided that if we had to rip out the floor we were just going to look at it as a remodel, not just trying to repair what was originally there. The rot went under the tub so it had to come out. The linen closet walls had water damage, and the floor had to come out underneath of those walls anyway.
If it all had to come out, it all had to get rebuilt, so we decided to get what we wanted. Apparently that was a double tub? something really old that shattered. We wanted to go with a walkin shower with glass doors instead. Linen closet is gone entirely, we moved the toilet to the other side of the new shower and will use a piece of furniture to hold the towels.
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| We picked out tiles |
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| I want these glass doors |
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| These are the floor tiles we picked |
The contractor has gotten the bones all figured out, and my next post about it will show some actual forward progress. This easy 3 day project has now been going on for 5 weeks so far, and we've got about 2 weeks left. I'm hoping they can wrap up next week, but Kelley thinks it will be another month before we can actually use the new bathroom. We're trying to make lemonade out of the lemons we've been given here, and that's not even a pee joke. Continual forward progress!
3 comments:
Holy crap. That's crazy. I guess that is the way it goes with older homes. Ours is 100 years old so I am sure we'll encounter things like this at some point! I can't wait to see the finished product, though! It'll be nice to have a sweet bathroom! Is this the bathroom in the main part of your house or the one I used when I stayed with you?
Yay to a new bathroom. Glad you realized you were in over your head, too. So many people are stubborn when it comes to that.
Reminds me of my house in Dallas except worse! We had some subfloor rot under the shower stall, but that was mostly it. Since the shower stall was "harvest gold" and the peel n stick tiles had some major gaps, we too, went for an entire remodel. The other post was already a huge improvement, so you're doing well! We did a similar black and white sheet tile in our bathroom back then. I hated installing it. Never again will I spend that much time on my hands and knees.
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