I have been wanting to do a "how-to" post now for some time. The occasion of building an entire bathroom from scratch provided the opportunity. As background for why I did this project, our home had one full bath and a "half bath" when we bought the place. The half bath consisted of a white room with unfinished walls, bare pipes in the walls and concrete floor. I attempted to get the bathroom in working order by installing a toilet on the existing plumbing, but after several backups I abandoned use entirely and the room became more of a catch-all for baskets of stuff when we hosted friends and needed a quick stash for stuff. Several months ago, during a visit to my family in Indiana, I talked with my dad a lot about options for making the bathroom workable. At that time we were intending a major kitchen overhaul, but through conversations and his encouragement, I decided to undertake the quick (HA!) project of getting the bathroom usable. So, we traveled home a couple days later and while Monica was at a First Communion retreat with our son, I tore apart the walls of the bathroom. The biggest advantage of this project is that the bathroom sits in a corner of our garage. This allowed easy access to 2 sides of the bathroom which were torn down, as well as the ability to expand several feet into the garage. For those of you with space-locked bathrooms, you are much less likely to expand the geographic footprint of your bathroom, but the renovation ideas will still apply. Here is the first photo I took. My only regret is that I didn't take an internal photo before knocking down the walls.
This was quite literally the easiest part of the project, the tearing down. I elected not to rent a dumpster, I recommend that for significant deconstruction that you do rent at least a small roll-off. My trash barrel was full to overflowing for weeks and I'm sure the neighbors were unhappy with my driveway's collection of drywall and concrete for a month or more.
At this point in the project my dad, youngest brother, and 90 year old grandfather (still active in mind and body!) came out to help with the progress. What a help they were, getting me through the major plumbing and floor joist construction. My brother literally knocked out most of the existing concrete while Dad and I were getting supplies.
Once the original concrete floor was completed we cut off and pulled the old pipe through to the basement.
Removing the cast iron pipe was NOT easy, we had to do some significant hammering with a 10lb sledge after using a carbide blade to cut the old pipe.
We ran the new PVC pipe from basement to bathroom. Old and new pipes were all 4", so it was simply a matter of tapping the PVC pipe through the original tunnel.
We cut the copper supply lines and converted them to pex with in-line shutoff valves. We have hot water heat, and the register had to be cut out and moved from the outside wall to the inside wall, as the room dimensions changed from 4'x4' to 5'x8' and the pipes would have ended up roughly under the sink. Soldering pipes is not difficult if you know the proper technique. Won't go into that today but if requested can do a how-to at another time.
We actually assembled the joist frame in the driveway and carried it into the garage mostly assembled. I used drywall screws instead of nails for 99% of this project. I prefer using screws as I can drill through-holes and make sure my lumber is exactly spaced. Screws are more expensive but are more forgiving if you need to do any "do-overs" on a particular step.
After getting the plumbing in and setting the floor joists, I cut my OSB subfloor and dry-fit it. I then set my shower base, toilet, and sink vanity base into place to get my spacing. I traced the outline of the toilet and sink base on the subfloor for reference. You can't actually see my traced outlines in this picture as I used an orange sharpie. What you are seeing are the pre-supplied lines, 16" on center, which is the spacing I used for all framing.
Once my rough spacing was complete I cut my plumbing access holes in the substrait. The PVC pipe you see going up to the attic is the vent pipe which gets reconnected to the copper pipe running through the roof. DO NOT forget this piece when doing plumbing. Vent pipes serve to exhaust sewer gas and prevent a vacuum in your pipes which can lead to water backup.
The next step was to place my wall studs. Since I was building around existing framing, I set a top plate against the garage ceiling joists, making sure that it was plumb with my bottom sill and ensuring that my joists were plumb. As I mentioned previously, my framing is all 16" on center. This is typical for construction but 24" is also used. I prefer using more studs than less even on non-loadbearing walls, as I have less fear of drywall bowing. For my corners I used scrap 2x4's to create my connection points for drywall and cement boards.
And, this is where I leave you for now. Next up you will see the process of setting cement boards for floor and shower tile. See you again soon!
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