It works!

Here's a photo of where we stood after week 1. After this we went back to work and have been chipping away at the finish work as we had time. You can see that the toilet is set over the cement board, and the sink is roughed in.
All the drywall is now up (untaped) and the power and electrical fixtures are in and on.
To stay motivated, we drew pictures of the sink on the drywall. We'll be done someday..

Waiting for the first shower in a week! We put plastic up over the cement boards to be able to use the shower without tile.

Plumbing rough-in

WOW.. it is Sunday - the end of the blitz - and the plumbing rough-in is going in. This was a big moment, there are so many systems in a room like this and it takes alot of planning and work to get to this point. Once the rough-in is done, we can place the toilet and live in our own house again! Here you can see two of the vent pipes and the dry waste line that we put in for a future bathroom upstairs.
Here's the hookup for the pedestal sink. Note that the tubing is Pex, while the future valves are copper.
This is our plumber, Deborah. A rare female plumber - she was a friend of a friend and pursuing her aprenticeship. We worked with her on sunday to get the system back in place. At the end of the day we had replaced and re-worked most of plumbing system.
Here's a shot of the tub. You can see the new valve in place. We re-built all the blocking to work with this fixture. The setting of the tub was the hardest part. We set it first with construction adhesive, but that failed after a few days. So we had to go back in with mortar, remove the adhesive and re-set the tub.
Here's the tie in to the existing cast iron vent stack.Deborah and I putting the finishing touches on. We had the drywall we needed pre-cut so that we could rough-in and then finish out the valve trim in the same day. At the end - we had a working toilet.

Interior framing

Ok, so where did I leave off. We had just put the drywall on the bedroom side and torn out the old wall. So now the fun begins with the work inside the room. this was still during the week of the bathroom blitz - somewhere around Friday. This is a shot from inside the room, you can see the old 1911 wall location in comparison to our new wall (see gap in the lath) and you can also see that we've put down the cement backer board for the tile.
Here's a shot of the shower enclosure, looking towards the SW corner. You can see the pocket for the pocketdoor (we rebuilt this pocket to drop the door height down to match the adjacent doors in the hall) and the electrical panel (see wires).
Here's a baseball game ticket from the Red Sox game that we went to that week - sealed up in the wall!
Here's the new fan and light in the shower - roughed in. We did all the mounting and locating - and then hired an electrician to run all the wiring and relocate the existing. That made the whole process more time efficient for him (and us).
Here's the first drywall to go into the bathroom! since we don't have any plumbing here we can go ahead and close it up. Feels good to get something finished into the room!

Bathroom Blitz - New Wall

Yarrggh! wielding the electric drill. I hear she prefers the circular saw.

In this photo you can see the new cementboard floor is down, and we've also framed up the new wall. The boards are down because we can't walk on the cementboard for 24 hours - as it is mortared down to the subfloor.

Here is Weezie viewed through the new and old wall.

Another shot of the two walls. We framed the new wall before demoing out the old one in case it was supporting part of the bedroom ceiling, and because we could then easily transfer over the switches and outlets.Another shot of the old and new wall looking into the bedroom. Note all the wiring and outlets.

Once the new wall was completed, we were able to demo the old wall. Here is a shot of the bedroom side showing the floor underneath the old wall. You can see how much room we got back in the bedroom! Note all the holes from the plumbing, etc. These boards were later replaced when the floor was refinished.With Will's help we added the drywall to the bedroom side. Nice.

Bathroom Blitz - Demolition part 3

Bang! Here's Evan breaking up the bathtub. We tried and tried to sell this to a salvager, but nobody wanted it. So, ultimately we decided to recycle it. To get it out of the room, the easiest thing to do with cast iron is to break it with a sledgehammer.


This is the old fir floor under the bathroom, same level as the refinished floor we have in the rest of the house. There was quite a bit of damage around the old sink and toilet from an old leak (common), so since we're here we decided to replace and repair
After strategic cutting cut through the floor and subfloor. I'm standing on the ground in the crawlspace below the house. The joists had been seriously compromised by the leak and holes cut to run pipes. We sistered on new joists to all the damaged areas.

Another shot of the hole. It is a bit disconcerting to see down to the basement inside the house.

Here's a shot of the new subfloor patch that we installed. Note that the finish floor was all removed, and only the wider planks of the subfloor is left around our plywood patch. all the wood in the house is VG doug fir of very high quality.


WOW - it has been alot of work to get to this point! Here's Louisa screwing down the new subfloor for the tile. This is on top of the structural subfloor to provide a consistant surface for the tiling. Cement board goes over this.

Bathroom Blitz - Demolition part 2

Pulling drywall, and disconnecting and cap-off of the electrical equipment. Most of the electrical work we did with the help at the critical re-wiring moment from a pro.


The old wall had 1/4 plywood over old lath and plaster. We removed the plywood and knocked off the plaster - intending to drywall over the lath.

You can see how big the original window in this room was by the extent of the lath. it was replaced long ago with the aluminum slider, and they blocked in the old opening.


Here's the end of demo day one. note that the floor is still in place. Clearly visible is the location of the original wall.

Bathroom Blitz - Demolition part 1

Like an archaeological dig.. pulling drywall off of the existing wall reveals the old wall a few inches behind.

Tub surround is off the walls. Taking the window out helps because we can throw stuff right out the new hole!

Drywall off the wall between the bedroom and bath reveals an impossible view of the window in that room. Note how close it is to the window.

Trim is off the old window.

Pulling the window...