Bathroom costs

I have been collecting receipts for the last year, this is what I have so far...

• $350 - 60"x42" White curb shower base
• $500 - Wall Tile, grout
• $40 - lights
• $20 - bargin door
• $120 - pocket door frame
• $100 - faucet
• $100 - drain PVC, ball valve, pex adapter, etc
• $130 - cement board
• $110 - waterproofing stuff
• $100 - self-leveling concrete
• $30 - mortar
• $35 - drywall

= $1635

I am sure there is more I am missing but it is probably under $2000.  We still have the floor, toilet, and vanity to find.  So all in will probably be close to $5000 I would guess.

Bathroom pt 10

We came up to do some raking and to turn off the water.  I was able to grout the shower so the next time we come up we can seal and put in a door and should be able to shower again!

Bathroom pt 9

We came up the previous week as well, but I didn't grab a picture.  Most of the tile is in now, I had pieces fall out on me, so I had to mix up a little thinset and re-apply.  Fan is in now too, that needed some work to get the hole right.

 

Bathroom pt 8

 More tiling this weekend, trying to figure out how to do the recess and cutting around the faucet.  Also, ran the water to the faucet so I could test that out.  Used the pex clamp.

Bathroom pt 7

I was able to get the shower waterproofed and start tiling this weekend.  We have that nice accent tile, but it ended up being closer to the wall then the big tile, so I am not sure how that is going to turn out.  But I went with it.

Loving the tile spacers and levelers!

 

Bathroom pt 6

 Progress continues, slow but steady...  Hard to get a lot done 2 days at a time, when your family enjoys your company as well 😁

I was able to get some drywall and durock up.  I used my left over thinset from filling in hole and tried to tuck point the cinderblock wall a bit as well.

Looks like the lights were installed as well.  I forgot to mention a spend a good chunk of time vanishing the ceiling as well, before the show pan went in.  I had a good respirator for that, and I am glad that I did, because it made the entire cabin stink for a day or 2 after!

Bathroom pt 5

 Another weekend some more progress.  I was able to get the hole drilled for the vent, install the sliding door, and get the shower pan installed (with the issues I mentioned in the last post).

Bathroom pt 4

 I was able to finish up most of the ceiling, and I put down self-leveling concrete in the shower pan.  However, self-leveling is a bit of a misnomer.  It looks really smooth and level, but it isn't 100% level there is probably at leave a 1/4 to 1/2 difference in some places...

I put some glue on the fins of the shower pan, but it didn't fix it entirely and the pan will squeak a bit here and there.  I may try to spray some foam under it, but it will probably not work well, since there are fins in the way...  If I could start over I would put down a bed of mortar, or make sure it was really level.

Bathroom pt 2

 I was eventually able to get the old plumbing out, I tried heat, that didn't work and probably wasn't too healthy...  The I used a reciprocating saw and cut off the trap, so I could use some drill bits and drill out the lead/oakum.  Eventually I was able to wiggle it out.

That is a lot of years of built up hair in the drain, amazing that it worked at all!

There is a rubber gasket that goes into the iron pipe, then this goes in and we start the looping.

I thought about putting the trap coming right out of the iron drain, but the guy at Ace said it would be best to have it right under the drain and it worked well like that.  Overall very happy with how it all turned out.  It seems to be draining well, and hopefully will be for a long time!

To redo a basement bathroom at the Cabin

 I am writing this on October 30th, because I wanted to finish the bathroom before I posted about it.  It is somewhat done at this point.  We did the demo on this day.  We had been up since Friday, but had played a lot!  Leading up to this, I had taken out the toilet, sink, drywall, and rewired for the new location of the switches.  But we had held off on the shower till now, since it is the only one!

That is the before.  We accomplished quite a bit that first day!

Then I saw this!

Shower Door for Kids

We have been talking about putting in shower doors in the kids bathroom for awhile.  The shower curtain pole would fall down and water would come out if the curtain wasn't positions just right.

We purchased a tub shower door kit and I was able to cut the threshold piece and put that down.  Then when we put the jambs on noticed that we would almost hit our head walking into the shower.  So it was back to Menards to get the full sized door.  I guess out tub is very low.

I put the threshold piece from the full size kit back in the tub kit and returned the tub kit to the store.  They weren't sure they wanted to take it back w/o going through the box, but laziness took over and they took it back w/o too much issue.  Though I can certainly understand why they would want to be careful.

Our shower has a trim piece that goes around the top, so I have to take off the little ridge that is on the back of the jamb.  It looks bad here, but you can't really tell once it was installed.  The install would have gone very quick, except for this and cutting the threshold and top piece.  I used a Dremel and the results look nice, but it took awhile.  And a lot of cutting wheels!

I tried to use a titanium bit to drill into the tile, but it wasn't working well and I was nervous to do it...  So I picked up this set and they work amazing well!  Glad I waited and used the right tool.

Very happy with the finished product, I would do these everywhere but they are about $600.

Vent for the basement bathroom

It was long overdue, but I finally installed a vent for the basement bathroom. It was inspired by Nick taking showers down there. Getting into the basement took a lot more work than I anticipated.

It was more than my hole saw would handle, so I had to do it in pieces.  But eventually I made it through. I caulked the back of the vent and attached it to this perfect piece of vinyl that I found at Menards.

Then I just attached some duct to both ends and now the fan vents outside instead of into my basement.  I think I am going to get a timer for the fan so you can just press a button when you start showering and it will run for a half hour or so.  Otherwise I could see it getting left on, or turned off too soon.

Toilet Trouble

We went up to the cabin for the second time this year so we had an idea of some of the issue we were looking forward to.  You can see the toilet fill mechanism cracked, so we had to manually control the shutoff value to fill the tank.

Fortunately, the fix was an $8 part from Menards.  It was a simple fix and Nick handled this one all by himself while I was working on other issues! 

 

Cabin Bathroom Remodel ++

 On Sunday we finished most of the remove work.  The floor is done (except for some final caulking), the sink is in (except for the water lines, since the ones I had were too short), the toilet is working, still need to finish the cabinet door, and the electric heat is back up (after a little tingle, I really wish all electricity came through the switch first).

We reused the medicine cabinet, but I did something pretty cool.  I opened up the wall and recessed it.  This will give us a little more head space above the sink.  We all took the opportunity to sign the back of the wall of course.

Fortunately, the drywall behind there is covered in paneling as some of the nails pulled through when I cut out the stud.  Overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out.  We are excited to get back up and finish off the few final remaining parts of it and get to work on the next project!

Cabin Bathroom Remodel +

 Now that the demo is done, Jen started painting the walls.  We went with a darker color which was controversal, but it turned out really sharp.  The drywall had been up for a long time and soaked up a lot of paint, which made the first coat challenging.  But once the first one was up the second went quicker.

While Jen worked on that I tried the old spray painter that Greg had in the basement.  It didn't work as well as I had hoped.  Paint came out and covered the wall, but it kind of made a mess too.

Once that was done I worked on building some shelves for the room as well.  Since we don't know what we want to do with the floor yet and I want to keep as much off the floor as possible I went with a hanging design.  I used old wood that had been shelves in other parts of the basement that we had taken done.

Cabin Bathroom Remodel

 The bathroom at the cabin is in bad need of a redo.  Greg had purchased a new toilet 2 years ago, but we never got around to installing it.  Since Jen and I had appointments for our COVID shot in Brainerd last week we went up early and spent the week working on it.  Here is the before:

It wouldn't have been so bad, but the toilet had a condensation problem and the floor around it was in pretty bad shape.  First we had to pull the baseboard tile off the wall.  It was attached with glue, so it was a combination of prying and using the oscillating tool.  There were some cracked wall tiles, which we were trying to preserve, but they were below where the new tiles would cover so we were OK.

Then we started pulling up the linoleum around the toilet and found that it was glued down plus the floor was in bad shape.

Luckily there is a subfloor that is in pretty good shape, so we started pulling up the floor which took most of a day.

That oscillating tool was the hero of the project for sure!  I used it and the circular saw to cut through the floor and pull it out in chunks.