2.02.2011

Involuntary Bathroom Remodeling

"What's THIS?!" we heard Max bellow from the bathtub.  We had a suspicion something was wrong, but we had no idea what was ahead of us.

It was about two months ago that Kendra and I rushed into the bathroom to see what Max had found during bath time.  In his hand was a small plastic sliver--which, unfortunately, had chipped off the bottom of the bath tub. As we inspected the tub, it became obvious that the tub's useful life had ended quite some time ago.  We always knew the tub would need replacing soon, but it wasn't really a project that was on the front burner.  But with the cracked bottom the tub was now unusable. It was decided--we'd install a new tub, with a new tile surround.

The first order of business was demo.  Since I didn't take any "before" pictures, I'll have to describe the old setup.  Our bathroom walls are textured plaster.  We had a tub/shower combo, with the tub being a non-functional whirlpool tub.  There was vinyl paneling on the shower walls for waterproofing.  Demo started with removing the vinyl paneling.  Unfortunately, this involved just peeling the panels off the walls, as they were stuck directly to the plaster with some type of adhesive.  That was the extent of the wall waterproofing, and it showed.  When I removed the panels, I was greeted by soggy plaster and drywall, which just crumbled off the wall in places.  It made demo easier, but it was more than a little concerning how much water was passing through to the structural elements of the house.  With the help of my craftsman multitool, I was able to cut out plaster from the area to be tiled.  The multitool gave me a nice, straight cut, which should make the cement board installation that much easier:

After cutting/demoing down to the wood lathe, it was time to remove the tub.  As I started to take a closer look at things, I noticed that the old tub actually penetrated one of the walls.  I guess I always knew this, but before now I never paid much attention.  You see, the wall-to-wall measurement is 57 inches, 3 inches too short for your standard 60 inch tub.  That didn't stop one of the previous homeowners from "installing" a 60 inch, drop-in style jetted tub, though -- just shove it three inches into the wall and call it good.  This would not do for our replacement, so this was one area we'd need to address during the new install.

After getting the tub out, I was able to assess the floor.  It was awful.  The tub was resting on a piece of plywood, which was so rotted I was able to fold it in half like a piece of cardboard.  Tongue-in-groove hardwood flooring was laid underneath the plywood.  It also appeared a little wet, so I poked at it with my finger--and a chunk of the flooring crumbled and fell into the basement below.  On the optimistic side, the rotted wood made for an easier demolition, and soon I had removed the existing subfloor.  I could peer into the basement (which is a crawlspace under that particular part of the house) and see the floor joists.  Unfortunately, what I could see was that the top 1" or so of several joists was also rotted.  When the demo was finished, here's how things looked:



The amount of water damage wasn't really surprising, but it was disappointing.  With substantial rebuilding required before I could even start replacing the tub, the "new tub" project was taking on much more of a carpentry feel than I would prefer.  But that's probably enough for now.  You'll have to wait for the next blog post to see how the carpentry went.

2 comments:

laurenjanelle said...

Too bad about the water damage. Hope the rebuild goes better for you.

dfrench23 said...

I'd say Max just helped A LOT! By finding this you can attend to something that, while costing big money, could have been a catastrophic problem to the house...not to mention if someone was standing in it when it decided to drop to the basement!

Good luck!