Here’s the master bathroom remodeling evolution.

Before, in all its glory:

Teardown and remodel:

and after the remodel:

Handsgrohe Axor shower and Porcher sink:

Demolition is going on. After the kitchen, I turned to the first bathroom, the one at the end of the hallway.

I’m still full of enthusiasm (if only I knew…) and getting rid of this old stuff is quite liberating. I have respirator, goggles and gloves on - what you find under an old bathroom is not exactly pretty and probably not very healthy neither! This drywall seems to be the original one (circa 1964), and wow, I don’t think I want to breathe too much of it - I’ll keep the respirator, thank you.

Everything was in very poor shape and came off quite easily.

Well, everything but the bath tub. It felt fairly heavy and sturdy, and I was hoping this would be one of these cast iron tubs that you can just break with a hammer. Not so lucky - it was just cheap iron. You cannot break these, nor cut them (like you would cut an acrylic bathtub); you need to remove it in one piece. The first problem was an unexpected one: I couldn’t remove the old rusty drain basket… come on, how hard can this be? I don’t even have to be careful about the tub… no, cannot even get a grip on that thing… losing my calm and getting the hammer out doesn’t help much neither… Problem will be solved a few days later with the help of a contractor I was discussing a bid with: “oh you know, there’s a special wrench for this. I can lend you mine”. Thank you Steve!

Since then, I’ve found a web page describing another method to accomplish this. Obviously quite a common problem

Now, the second challenge is to lift and get this tub out of the house. It’s very heavy and it sits tight between the two opposite walls. This is impossible alone (yes, I tried and wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re looking at crushing your back and fingers). There again, problem was solved a few days later, with the help of my father. Three people wouldn’t have been too many, especially as you have to twist this heavy tub in some inimaginable ways to get through all the door frames!

Overall, it probably took me two full days to get through that demolition and clean-up.

I don’t think I had ever enjoyed a shower as much as I did enjoy the one I would take at the end of each day during that demolition exercise (back at the house we were renting, in a bathroom that was still in one piece)!

When I started all this I swore to myself I would stay away from plumbing. I’m comfortable around electrons and wires. But water and pipes?! Well, it turned out that my first rebuilding task in the house would be plumbing.

The laundry area as it was when we bought the house. It’s located in the hallway that leads to the bathroom.

The laundry area in the house is in the hallway between the dining and the bathroom. We really wanted it to be in the garage, but there’s no drain there and the list of work is long enough as it is. So we decided to simply clean up the existing laundry area for now:

• put up some new greenboard
• tile the floor
• stack up the appliances (instead of leaving them side-by-side)
• put up new shelves
• close the area with folding doors

Since I was about to put up new greenboard in this area, I figured out I might as well clean-up the plumbing by installing a tidy valve box.

Only thing: the valves were directly soldered to the pipes. Hiring a plumber for such a small job? How much would it cost me?

Oh well. The Depot had a sale on a soldering kit. Not even half the price of what I would have to pay a plumber to visit me. I might as well get my feet wet!

So here I was, with my propane torch and a book teaching sweat soldering 101. Luckily I wasn’t under time pressure… it took me literally hours and 2 attempts to get that stuff right! Be kind - don’t laugh at me.

Tip: Empty your pipes as well as possible. Any remaining water will make your task very difficult. In my case, the pipes were vertical and full of water. Shutting down the main valve and leaving the taps in the house open was not enough. Modern constructions usually have a purge valve, located very low - of course, this house doesn’t have one. Second best is to locate the lowest tap in the system, often an outside bib, and leave it open. If that is still not enough (remember that everything is pretty much level in an Eichler, a one-story house resting on a concrete slab…) you will need to be creative. One thing that worked for me: blow some air through another pipe from the same system (cold or hot) and force the trapped water out… believe me, that works, even from one room to another. Copper is not really tasty, but it isn’t that bad neither!

One year later - was a propane torch the right tool to buy?

Not really. I wish I hadn’t been cheap on that one. The MAPP gas torch was only about $10 more expensive than the Propane one. And the time and frustration you might spare yourself with a MAPP torch are well worth the extra cost. MAPP allows you to heat the copper much faster. This is very convenient when you deal with pipes that you cannot empty properly. In one instance I had to repair a leaky manifold still full of water by brazing small leaves of copper to it - this was literally impossible with the Propane torch. So go for it.

I hate to put some limits to your creativity, but bathroom remodeling is subjects to some hard constraints.

At the beginning we had all these brilliant ideas for our bathrooms. We sketched multiple plans, moving fixtures around. For instance we really wanted to switch the shower and the bath tub - it seemed that having the tub in the master bathroom and the shower in the guest bathroom would make more sense (how likely are your guests to have a bath when visiting you?). Sure, it sounded good on paper…

Wake up! Bathroom fixtures are no regular furniture. They need water, just like plants - actually this is not such a big deal: re-routing copper pipes is within reach of a handy homeowner. But more importantly: they need to evacuate waste and used water. Through drains. Drains are these heavy, large pipes, going from the roof (each drain is ventilated) to the floor where they exit the house through the concrete slab.

Think about what would be involved in moving one of these drains: jack-hammering the concrete slab (and if you own a working radiant-heat system you should be very circonspect about the idea of hammering your slab!), but also potentially having to open the roof in a different location (and if you have a single-ply roofing system, opening a hole in the roof requires professional intervention to maintain your warranty). Oh, and last but not least: you would need to reroute these heavy pipes - I have no experience in this domain, wouldn’t even know where and how to start, but this sure wouldn’t be as easy as a copper soldering…

Bottom line: unless you have an unlimited budget you should really consider a bathroom remodeling that keeps the fixtures (sink, tub or shower and toilets) in their original location. Unleash your creativity in other areas: tiles, cabinets, windows or skylight etc. There is plenty that can be done to give a radically different look to your bathroom.

As far as we’re concerned, the tub and the shower will not leave the locations they had adopted back in 1964, when the house was built!