I was 7 months pregnant when we decided to tackle the 2nd floor bathroom. It all started with the thought that we could freshen it up with a little paint. The bathroom had yellow and black tiles for a tub surround and going halfway up the walls, and had nasty yellow square floor tiles. I looked it up online, and we double-checked at the paint store. Sure, you can paint tile. Just use this epoxy paint!
So, I started by scuffing up the tile with a sander, then painted on the primer, which really made a huge difference! The only problem... next day when I pulled back a little of the masking tape I had used to protect the walls, the primer came off with it.
So we called the "home improvement hotline" -- i.e., my parents. "Dad, is it hard to remove tile?" He said no, we should be able to knock it right off with a chisel and hammer.
Sure enough, when we attacked the tile wall, a couple of tiles broke away easily -- only to reveal the OTHER layer of tiles (a lovely shade of 1940s pink). Actually, I think I could have lived with pink tiles, if we would have been able to remove all the residue of cement that the yellow tiles were stuck to them with. However, that was impossible. The only answer was to remove BOTH layers of tiles. The pink layer was a much more difficult matter to remove. That is the understatement of the year. It had been applied by imbedding it in mortar and metal lathe. It took a sledge hammer to break any of it loose, and after that we found we had better luck getting through to the lathe and cutting out sections with a wire cutter. We had to pull the lathe free of the studs. Yes, we were down to the studs. And all this had started as a simple paint job!
Similarly, there were two layers of tile on the floor. The pink layer were tiny little squares. It took a lot of pounding with the sledge hammer, which at one point sent a hunk plaster crashing down through a plumbing access panel in the kitchen ceiling, and actually poking holes in the plaster of the kitchen ceiling. Nothing a little joint compound couldn't fix though.
Finally, the bathroom was completely gutted. There were about 80 garbage bags full of debris on the curb. HEAVY debris.
We had kept the ceiling but stripped the little bit of plaster that there was off the walls. We installed cement backer-board around the tub, because my dad (a plumber) said it was more absorbant so if the surround leaked, the walls would hold the water so it would not leak into the rest of the house.
Here is a key point that will save you a lot of trouble if you've never cut cement backerboard before: DO NOT USE A CIRCULAR SAW. You don't need it for one thing. You can score the cement backerboard with Stanley knife just like you do with drywall, and break it on the score. We had set up our cutting station in our living room, and cut with the circular saw. The dust that filled the house sent me into a sobbing fit like my husband had not seen yet in our marriage. I'm sure it was partly the great offense to my nesting instinct, but oh the MESS, dust on everything we owned. The Stanley knife method is much less dusty.
We put greenboard drywall up around the rest of the bathroom, and a plywood subfloor down. The day that subfloor went in was a very happy day.
It was our first experience taping drywall, and we didn't do the best job sanding the seams... my dad actually sanded them again after we had the walls primed, and they were a little better. We used a textured wallpaper for the lower part of the walls, which hid a lot of mistakes especially around the plumbing under the sink, where we had to make some tricky cuts.
The most memorable adventure of all by far was the Battle of the Toilet Flange. In the process of removing tile with a sledgehammer, the old flange had been inadvertantly damaged. It had to be replaced. This is not something that has to be done very often, if ever. They aren't really meant to come back off. And our flange was not budging! This time we consulted with my grandfather, who was more familiar with 1940s plumbing. He said the flange was probably held in with lead and rope sodder. He suggested engine oil to loosen it. With a vice clamp (the kind you squeeze to open) on each of two sides of the flange, and lots of engine oil down the crack, it finally started to budge, and with some jiggling back and forth and a lot of unintelligible noises from my DH, it finally pulled loose.
Another thing we did was move the light switch to the wall next to the door frame (instead of right by the sink) so we could switch the door so it opened to the wall, instead of banging into the toilet. That was when we found out that the room was crooked. The door was no where even close to fitting back into the opening once we switched it around. We ended up buying a new door, which my DH and my dad fiddled with until they had it cut to the right shape and size. As for the floor of the room, to this day it is probably still slanted. It's not noticeable unless you're looking for it, and the lovely vinyl floor we put in makes up for all grievances.
So here are the before and after bathroom remodel photos.
BELOW - This picture was taken when we were looking at the house before we bought it, when the previous owners still lived there. Can you believe we bought this place? :
BELOW - Here is the tub surround after the remodel (no more tile around the heating vent!). The installation of the surround was interesting, since the standard ones didn't QUITE fit. We actually wound up buying two surrounds, and the panel behind the shower head was shorter than the others, but we made it work:
BELOW - Here's a bathroom BEFORE photo taken from the hallway (a nice view of the yellow tile floor):
BELOW - And here's the AFTER bathroom remodel photo taken from the hallway:
BELOW - One more view of the remodeled bathroom:
By the way, the night I went into labor, I showered in our basement bathroom. But it wasn't too long after the baby was born that the bathroom was completely finished.
