-- Days One and Two --

Since this bathroom renovation took several days to complete, its only fair that it take a couple days to cover in blog land.  So here are Days One and Two.

DAY ONE: Demolition Day!

After spending some time with Lucas' parents for Christmas and Boxing Day, we headed home on December 27 with the intention of beginning the demolition of the bath/shower.  We didn't get home and unpacked until 3pm though so we were already a little behind schedule before we even started.  But, demolition went quickly...

We started around 3:30pm:

Lucas was super excited to get out the crowbar - I however, hated the sound and could often be found hiding behind the door :)

By 3:45 one whole wall was exposed.

We tried to keep the mess contained and we succeeded - for a while...

Lucas found that the tile was coming off really easily.  In fact, instead of chipping away at tile like we had expected, the tiles were coming off in sheets, while still attached to the drywall that was behind it.

So we just piled it up inside the tub :)

Once the walls were cleaned of all the tiles, drywall and nails/screws, we cleaned out the garbage and moved into tub removal mode.

And by 4:41pm, the whole area was cleaned out, and the tub was at the side of the road hoping that someone would want it :)

So we vacuumed up the remaining messes, sized up the plumbing situation and made our first trip to Home Depot of the day.

DAY TWO: All Our Hard Work is Going to Be Hidden Behind a Wall Day !?!


Before beginning this project, I had no idea that it could take so long to join a few pieces of copper together.  The plan for Day Two was to get the plumbing figured out, to put the tub in place and to put up the cement board for the walls.  But we had a few issues to deal with on Day Two that kept our progress from going as smoothly as hoped.


We knew that we needed to start by getting the copper figured out and since it was all going to have to move over by a couple inches to accommodate the wider tub we chose, that was a more time consuming process than expected - especially because 2 inches over meant being positioned in the middle of a 2x4.


So out came the 2x4, Lucas cut a bunch of copper pipe and together we got to work reinforcing the new pipes, piecing the new pipes together, cleaning the copper ends and soldering.

Luckily we only caught the 2x4s on fire a couple of times :)

Here's the finished product.  It only took several hours and 2 additional trips to Home Depot to get it set up properly (we had to make the extra trips because I chose a tub spout that didn't jive well with the plumbing/tile set-up... but you'd have to ask Lucas to get the story... I'm not sure I fully understand it).

Then came the process of bringing the tub up from the kitchen where it had been living since the previous evening.

It slid into place rather easily, Lucas sealed the drain with silicone (like the Home Depot guy suggested) and we started filling the baby up to check to make sure the drain was functioning properly as well as all the ABS drain and overflow pipes that we also had to re-route.

Problem was, after filling the tub up for about 3 minutes or so, and letting it sit for a minute... we started hearing dripping :(

I rushed downstairs to find about 8 cups of water in the light fixture in our kitchen!

There are no pictures of this little catastrophe because it was a little frantic for a while, but we quickly surmised that we had a drain problem which we have blamed on using silicone on the drain.  So, off we went to Home Depot for a 3rd time that day.  We picked up some plumber's putty and headed home hoping that it would fix the problem.  So, after Lucas removed the drain, cleaned off the silicone and re-sealed the drain with the putty, we crossed our fingers and headed for bed.

Coming up tomorrow will be Day Three - Wonderful Wonderboard, Day Four - Tiling and Five - Ringing in the New Year by Scraping Grout for 8 hours!!!