"Master" bath remodel.

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Hack

Hack

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I've been posting in other sections based on what I don't know, but I thought I'd start a thread here about my upstairs bathroom remodel.

The house is old (for CA) and there is no Master Bath. There are three bedrooms upstairs that share one bathroom. For a family with children, this would probably be a problem, but we don't have any, so it's not really an issue...except that it's been demolished for the last two months and the wife wants her bathroom back!!!

Here are a few before pictures. This was a pretty simple bathroom. Big Box single vanity, tile floor, shallow short tub with tile surround. We didn't think it fit with the old house, so we decided up remodel.

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With the decision to reno', we had to decide if we were going to pull permits or not. It's basically a remove/replace, but with subtle changes to the plumbing and electrical. We've got a "difficult" neighbor, so we decided to take the high road and ask the City. Of course they said we needed permits...:rolleyes: No big deal. I sketched up the plan, my wife walked it down to the planning dept. and got the permits on the spot.

We started demo the day after we had a family dinner (Nov. 3). Because this is an old house, and this bath was added after the home was built (it was a closet originally), we didn't know what we would find behind the walls or under the floor.

We decided that the boxed in corners needed to be opened up to make the room appear larger than it is. When we broke through the wall on one side, it was clear that there were shelves in there at one time, and there were actually still items on the shelves!

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The "new" tub is a 67" long by 24" deep Cast Iron clawfoot tub. I found it on Craigslist in a nearby town. I need to polish it inside, and it will get a fresh coat of paint on the outside (not yellow). The clawfeet aren't in the picture because they are out to the plating company getting an Oil Rubbed Bronze finish on them.
The tub weighs 300# dry. It will be about 750# full with a person in it.

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I built the custom vanity that will be in the bathroom. It's Philippine Mahogany with a sprayed Poly finish. Two White porcelain bowls are undermounted to a 3/4" White Carrerra Marble slab top. It's 64", 22" deep, and 36" high. Plenty of storage...

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The walls of the room will have 4' tall beadboard panels attached with a cap. I have chosen a layout (after many discussions and polls asking opinions) like this:

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Our inspiration for this bath came from looking through countless magazines of old houses, going on home tours in our town, searching on the internet, and our own personal goals of having a bathroom with TWO sinks, and a tub large enough to take a "real" bath in...Here's what we're aiming for. We can't do a commode with a high tank because it would be in front of the window, so we're recycling ours and putting it back in the room. It's in good shape anyway...

Once I remember to bring the camera in, I'll post some other pictures of the progress, and keep posting until we're done, or until I get banned from this site...:p

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Looks like a good project. I love the ol clawfoots, plenty of lean back area.
Just make sure the photos have bubblebath and good angles so you can show the cleanliness.:D
 
Well, we've got all the rock up. We used the new (to me) yellow panels. What a PITA to work with. They're heavy as heck, and they have glass in them, so you should probably wear a mask and long sleeves...:( I'm not a big fan of this stuff...

I hired a guy to smooth out the walls and ceiling. He's charging me $200 for the whole room (I taped and did the first coat of mud).

I was torn about what to do with the very large vent pipe in the room. I thought at first that I'd just leave it exposed and paint it, but it angles up into the wall, which would have made it difficult. I talked with the wife about it, and we decided to box it in. This leaves a small cubby behind the pipe box. The wife wants me to put a small door over the space and she can hide the toilet brush and plunger back there...seems like a good idea...:confused:

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Getting rid of that ridge at the bottom of the curved ceiling makes a big difference. In that very first photo my eyes were drawn directly to that ridge, and looked like it was hacked together. Looks a lot cleaner now.

You're doing a real ace of a job there. I thought I had commented about the cabinet earlier, but apparently I didn't hit the submit button hard enough. Anyway, it's way impressive. You must have a really nice work shop setup to produce that kind of quality. I'm green with envy! :D
 
ToolGuy said:
Getting rid of that ridge at the bottom of the curved ceiling makes a big difference. In that very first photo my eyes were drawn directly to that ridge, and looked like it was hacked together. Looks a lot cleaner now.

You're doing a real ace of a job there. I thought I had commented about the cabinet earlier, but apparently I didn't hit the submit button hard enough. Anyway, it's way impressive. You must have a really nice work shop setup to produce that kind of quality. I'm green with envy! :D
Click to expand...

The ridge was the result of placing drywall directly over lath and plaster. It was the first thing I looked at when I first saw the room, too...

Glad you like the new vanity. My work shop doubles as a garage, but it's a big garage, so I have enough room to work...

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Got more done over the weekend. We spent Saturday putting down the HardiBacker. On Sunday, the drywall guy came over and did the final sand. We primed and painted Sunday evening. I don't have a picture of the final paint, just the beginning of cut-in...We'll see how this color looks after it's all in. Might be too much for the room...

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Hey Jeff:
It all looks great to me man. Nice shop, nice job on the bath and even a nice color. Perhaps you could add a nice border or crown mould at the ceiling for an extra appeal.
Glenn
 
glennjanie said:
Hey Jeff:
It all looks great to me man. Nice shop, nice job on the bath and even a nice color. Perhaps you could add a nice border or crown mould at the ceiling for an extra appeal.
Glenn
Click to expand...

Good idea Glenn. I think crown molding would be very difficult due to the angles at the wall to ceiling transition (especially the round part). An accent color would probably be easier.

My wife is scraping and sanding the tub today. It's going to get a coat of primer, and then a dark green color on the outside to complement the light green of the walls. Maybe we could stencil a pattern at the top of the wall with that dark green color...
 
Yeah, I had forgotten stencils. Some Ivy vines would look good up there.
Glenn
 
Here's the paint done. I had thought to paint all the way down to the floor in case some future owners wanted to remove the beadboard, but they'd probably be repainting anyway...

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Nice colors. Don't forget to paint the lower rail of the upper window sash.....to late huh.:D
 
inspectorD said:
Nice colors. Don't forget to paint the lower rail of the upper window sash.....to late huh.:D
Click to expand...

LOL...

Yeah, I saw that after I posted the picture and thought: I wonder if somebody's gonna smack me on that ;)

I need to remove the lower sash before I repaint the trim around the window. One of the weight ropes was cut (not sure why) so the window doesn't stay up. We don't really ever open it anyway, but it still bugs me. You can see that we replaced the bottom sash glass with "privacy" glass. This is because there's a rather large building directly across the street that looks directly into that bathroom window (eek!) I'm going to repair the weight, repaint all the trim while the lower sash is our, and in general get the window functional again. I think it would be nice to be able to open the upper sash in the summer for some airflow...
 
Got some more done over the weekend. We got the marble flooring in and grouted last night. The wife got the tub painted and I installed the claw feet that were re-plated. I need to buff out the inside of the tub and get it to shine. I hope to get the beadboard up this week so we can move the vanity into place this Saturday. That way, we can get the counter top guys in Monday to make a pattern for the top. Again, I forgot the camera, so I'll have to post pics later...
 
Good progress this last week on the remodel.

Got all the tile in last weekend. Installed enough beadboard to get the vanity installed tonight so we can get the marble shop started on the top.

The beadboard went in pretty well. We've still got quite a bit more to do, but it should go quickly...You can see the joint between the two panels just to the left of the cold water supply on the left sink. I forgot to paint down that line when I painted the trim in place. I'll have to remember to do that tonight.

Let me know what you think. If you have any suggestions, please let me know them as well!

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