Long Term Home Remodel Project

Phase IX - The Bathrooms

So It Finally Begins

At least since the beginning of this recorded remodel history, we have intended to replace the bathtub with a walk-in shower. The only time we ever used the tub was to wash the dogs. Also, as we get older it becomes harder, and more dangerous, stepping over it to shower. We talked but never seemed to get around to doing it. Then last spring, the lady of the house developed a medical problem that left her considerably weakened. She needed a bar on the wall or something to assist in getting off the low toilet. Our son, Rick, obliged by installing one which did help a lot. The next day he just showed up with a new "comfort height" unit to replace the old one. It is a nice one-piece unit with dual flush modes. I think 1.1 and 1.6 gallons. That seemed to start a chain reaction of sorts that ultimately ended with a complete remodel of the main bathroom. The master half-bath is yet to come and will, of course, be much simpler.

With that done, he determined, and rightly so, that it was no longer safe or acceptable for his mother to step over the tub side to reach the shower. So he ordered the new replacement shower pan that she always wanted. Then, we set about doing the conversion. When I say "we", I mean he did most of the heavy work while I worked as gofor, you know, go for this and go for that as needed, and "supervised", naturally.

The first extra step was the fault of my own doing. One short-lived fad in the 70s, when we bought the house, was dropped ceilings with florescent lighting above. So, I added that back then. Well, we wanted the new shower tile to go to the ceiling so the dropped part had to go. As I said, it was a short-lived fad anyway and should have been removed a long time ago. Unfortunately, I did an excellent job of building it initially and it tuned out to be a big job tearing it down.

This is a small room, typical of modest 50s homes, and swinging a full-size sledge hammer seemed risky so Rick opted to attempt breaking the cast iron tub with the small version. This was not promising at first but after a few blows it finally cracked. About a half hour later, it was in small enough pieces that the two of us could muscle it outside to his pickup bed, where we would later take it to the dump along with the rest of the rubble. I expect his arm was pretty sore the next day or two.

It was now time to correct the lighting; a bare shop light hanging from the ceiling would hardly be acceptable with the drop ceiling hiding it gone. The room originally had a single fixture in the ceiling which I removed for the shop light. It also had one of those common metal medicine cabinets set into the wall above the sink which I also removed and replaced with a framed mirror. In the process, I added light bars both sides of the mirror. I did remember not doing the wiring to code at the time. I replaced the medicine cabinet with a one I built and installed above the toilet. We wanted a main overhead fixture and a smaller one over the shower. The bar lights needed to be replaced and we wanted to correct any non code mistakes I had made in the past. Replacing most of the wiring in the wall was fairly straight forward except for drilling through the top plate to the attic; there was a ceiling joist above it. The bigger problem was ceiling wiring to the lights and the exhaust fan as access to the attic was impossible. Repair the Roof explained the roof is pretty low pitch and the duct work for the heat and air unit is concentrated just above this bathroom. It all had to be accomplished from below and did require and extra hole cut in the ceiling. For the main light, I found a nice wide, low-profile LED unit with 1300 lumens (whatever that really means) output and adjustable color. We set it for 5000K, sunlight, and it is truly ideal for a bathroom, especially as our eyes get older. For the shower unit, we got a smaller unit, also with adjustable color and set it for 5000K too. It took the two of us a little over two days but the final result is well worth the effort. These photos show the two lights.

With the tub gone, we started work on the drain. Originally, there was a barrel trap. These things are really effective but difficult to clean out if clogged. There is a lid that screws off for easy access but the things are made of lead and are pretty soft. Over time, the lead oxidizes to the barrel and there is a strong possibility of breaking things if you twist too hard. We intended to replace it with a more common P-trap. Unfortunately, it was almost under the slab. The outlet was presumably also a lead pipe and since it could not be seen we decided to leave the barrel rather than risk a more major plumbing error. We failed to get the top off but it has been working all right. Rick built a drain system from pvc pipes and one rubber sleeve that we affectionately call the "FrankenDrain". This was a pretty good feat as it had to fit the drain hole on the new shower pan. That meant lining up to a hole, not yet installed, with a tolerance of less than 1/4 inch. The photos show the final result. The left one is from straight above. The right one is through the access opening in the hall.

The next step was the walls. I had removed the 4 inch pink tile not long after we moved in because most of it was falling off anyway and it was pretty ugly. I remember replacing some of the rotted sheetrock at the time then covered the walls with one of those plastic tub/shower surrounds. I also replaced a shower curtain with a set of inexpensive shower doors. We intended to do it right this time which meant green board on the walls so all the old sheetrock came off next.

With the wallboard gone, we had good access to the water supply lines. The plan was to do all soldered fittings. We shut off the main water valve to the house, cut the lines and attempted to solder shut-off valves so we could turn the water back on. This failed quite miserably. We never got a water tight joint. In fact, most of the joints failed to even suck the solder in. I am no expert but I have soldered pipes in the past with reasonable success. For some reason this was not to be the day and now it was getting late with no water. We made a quick run to Home Depot to replace those solder valves with compression fitting valves. None were to be found though. Fortunately, a young plumber pointed out the snap together fittings shortly before store closing. These things are almost like magic for us non-plumbers and they saved the day. We installed them and turned the water back on and all was well again. The rest of the plumbing was relatively easy and uneventful. Except, that is, we had to estimate where to put the control valve and shower head so as to minimize the cuts in the tile, also not yet installed. The photos first show the push-on cutoff valves installed, where we left it the first night with the house water back on. The others are of the supply plumbing from the bottom up to the head connection. Notice the upper pipe has a gentle curve. It is a little hard to see in the photos taken at a slight angle but we managed to get the supply lines to the control valve slightly different length, causing the valve to tilt just a bit. The curve gets the shower head back in vertical line with the valve and centered on the wall.

Then to fit the new shower pan per the manufacturer's instructions, we needed thicker wall covering than the 1/2 inch green board so we added a layer of new sheetrock before the green board. On two of the walls, we used 1/2 inch and the third was 3/8 inch. With the final application of the green board, this would fit the pan perfectly. You can see the flange raised around the edge of the pan. This is actually under the sheetrock and the green board overlaps the flange without touching it. This makes it very difficult for water to get in. Since it doesn't touch, capillary action can't suck it in and combination of the flange and the pan wall is high enough that water should never get there. The manufacturer says this will work and I am convinced it will, probably. This last photo shows the drain installed. The white ring is the FrankenDrain pipe and the black ring around it is a 3/4 inch thick grommet that seals it to the pan. This grommet fits so tight that I had to grease it and the pan opening to force it in. I don't think it will ever leak.

Finally, it was time to install the pan and discover the accuracy, or lack thereof, in building and placing the FrankenDrain. The pan is fairly heavy and the manufacturer says it does not need to be anchored to the floor. In our case, however, the floor had a slight hump near the center that caused the pan to rock. It is also very rigid. We decided the way to eliminate that was to set it in a bed of thinset mortar. With a couple of sticks to slide it in place which were easily removed after, the pan fit the space and lined up perfectly with the drain. Also, it did not rock. Well, that rubber sleeve did allow a slight adjustment at the end but I'm not sure it was really necessary. Next, we could finally install the green board that overlaps a flange around the pan. I didn't get any photos of that as it just didn't seem interesting.

The big job left at that point was the wall tile. I selected 12x12 tiles with sort of a white marble look. We intended very thin grout lines and white grout. The tiles were set in mastic rather than thinset. The interesting thing was the size. I expected the usual 12x12 including the grout lines. Well these tiles are actually about 3/16 over 12 inches, which messed with our planned measurements a bit, including the location of the fittings mentioned above. I actually took three days to install the tiles because I was afraid of too much weight on uncured mastic if I did too many rows at a time. Grouting was pretty straight forward except it can be hard to see the remaining thin film of white grout on white tiles. Days later I was still finding patches I missed in cleanup. The last two photos are closeup of the control valve and shower head outlet, showing how we managed to line it up to make tile cutting as easy as possible. You might notice those tile spacers. They are a new style to me and I like them better than the ones I have used in the past. When removing them later I stopped counting at 100. The left photo shows the blue plastic tarp we used to protect the pan from both the mastic and the grout. To comply with the manufacturer's installment method, the pan had to be in place before the green board and tile could be installed.

I used the same crown molding I used in the walk in closet. This presented two more "situations" to resolve. The ceiling joists run east to west and the south wall was not under one. With the tile all the way to the ceiling, there was no safe way to nail the crown on that wall without risk of hitting a tile; it is the long wall too. My solution was to cut a tapered backing strip on the table saw that just fit between the wall, ceiling and crown. This could safely be nailed to the top plate then the crown nailed to it. The second was the difference in the walls where the tile stops. It is about 3/4 inch proud of the sheetrock wall. This meant a very short return to mate the two levels of crown molding. Where that meets the sheetrock wall, it had to be coped to fit properly. That job on those small pieces was a bit fiddly at best. The photos show the end result. I am pleased with it.

It seems that I installed the dropped ceiling before papering the walls. Removing it left a one foot strip of bare walls above the existing paper. Well, I found a bit of left over paper stored above the old dropped ceiling that was just enough to cover the bare strip. But, you can't hide a horizontal seam in wallpaper. I found a baseboard topper that would look good turned upside down and used it at the top of the old paper, between it and the crown molding. That reduced the gap to 9 inches, exactly the repeat of the paper. I was able to cut the paper along the repeat lines and had just enough to finish the job. There was a scrap left about 14x7 inches. Close indeed, almost too close. So here we are at this time and condition. I still need to build a new vanity cabinet and I have enough tile left to cover the lower wall behind it and the toilet.