The blue tile on blue walls on blue carpeted bathroom had been shoddily remodeled over the years and we ended up tearing it down to the studs and starting over from scratch. The huge jetted tub took up much of the small bathroom and was installed about 1' off the ground to be on a platform level with the window (I suppose for optimal viewing while soaking). This did however put your head in the ceiling if you tried to shower rendering it pretty useless. We ended up having the shower head moved over and up about 1' to higher ground. You can see in the before photo that the previous owners used two shower curtains, one on each side of the tub because of the window.
This is how the bathroom looked for the previous two years. Some of the hardwood flooring had been stolen to patch up areas in the bedrooms. Needless to say this bathroom wasn't used much.
We began demo by hand but quickly realized we needed some power tools for the job
we ended up using an air hammer
In the photo above, the front of the tub's platform had been removed. This is a close up of the middle support to show the craftsmanship. I can not believe the tile on the top never cracked with this 1" + gap.
Demo nearing complete, at this point we realized we needed to take down the lath to make room for the cement board shower surround. In doing so we let loose all the original insulation, aka a mix of organic materials such as horse hair and sheep's wool. 100 year old sheep wool is pretty disgusting by the way and we were showered with it.
We also had to use a bit of foam filler as at this point you could actually see outside thru the walls in places. Once it was sealed up we installed the new insulation. The room actually stayed this way for a couple of weeks as we tried desperately to figure out what to do next and how to put it back together as by this point we were in deep over our heads. We finally gave up and hired people who actually knew what they were doing.
We had the plumbing for the shower relocated, the tile guy got to work installing the cement board and we hung the drywall. We used Mike Emmerson of Emmerson's Floor Covering (no website, 208.265.1591) who came highly recommended and did a great job. Because the tub is off the back wall a few feet we had a ledge built to take up the additional space.
Because we had such a large area to cover, we used a simple and relatively cheap 6"x6" Daltile in Almond with a travertine accent strip to tie into the floor.
Travertine flooring going in. We also had Mike use a leveling compound on the floor as it was sloped down a few inches toward the outside wall.
Tile completed, walls painted and sink installed. Luckily we were able to reuse the plumbing for the sink and toilet although they were both slightly rebuilt. All that was left was a light, mirror, molding and a few finishing touches. I installed an etched-glass look film on the window to block the view.
And of course, the final before and afters
No comments:
Post a Comment