Bathroom renovation: It's happening!

Between the oddness of the kitchen and the archaic layout of the main floor bathroom, we almost did not look at this house in 2014. How things have changed.

After about two years of planning, we finally kicked off the project in earnest. That is to say: we're well beyond the point of no return: as of yesterday (January 8, 2022), we no longer have functioning main floor bathroom...

For a refresher, here's what the bathroom looked like before. Note the small clearance between the toilet and bathtub. It's been an annoyance for us in the eight years we have lived here and likely had been an annoyance for the past 90 years.

As the years have passed, the bond between floor tiles and mortar bed started to fail. At random times, a new loose tile would appear. In the photo, prior attempts at repair are shown: 

It was finally time to get started. I pulled the sink and toilet first.

Then started pulling walls...

Bucket by bucket, I hauled away debris, gradually pulling down the walls. By the end of the evening on Saturday, almost all of the of the walls were down. An interesting discovery: most of the walls area had no insulation. No wonder it's so cold in there when taking a bath.

On Sunday, I picked up where I left off, first removing the tool collection from the room. I took down the remaining walls and then starting to pull up the floor. With a chisel bit on the rotary hammer, I made quick work of the floor. Within 90 minutes, the floor was broken up and put in the Bagster at the curb.

A few boards that supported the mortar bed were broken by the chisel. We're down to the joists! The good news is the floor joists are all at the same height, which means putting in a new subfloor will be pretty easy.

The room is down to the studs now. There are a few nails to pull from the studs. Insulation to install. Laundry chute to demolish. Progress!

I filled the Bagster, two five-gallon buckets at a time. 

In a future installment, I'll post more about the details of our design. I still have to take down the laundry chute, move the tub, and borrow some space from the hall closet.

Glad to be moving along with this project!