I began in March on a remodel of my hallway bathroom in my 1968 home in West Houston. I completely gutted it ceiling to floor (except I left the tub in place) and finally got 100% complete this past weekend.
Before: The original to the house drywall was falling down from the ceiling, the people who flipped the house back in 2008 had put in cheap builders grade material and did it half-assed and the bathroom was just overall crappy. Like a lot of houses built in the 60s, the bathroom had pointless soffits over both the vanity and the shower which made the room feel a ton smaller than it really is. There was also a massive linen closet that had doors that hardly opened and was also contributing to making the room feel smaller.
I did 100% of everything myself except for drywall which I farmed out because I was traveling for work at the time and didn't want to leave the room exposed to the attic any longer since it began getting hot. I was already pretty competent with electrical and general trim work, but the tiling was the main thing I had not done before. Luckily a good buddy had done plenty of it and was kind enough to let me borrow his tile saw and spend a weekend showing me the ropes.
Overall, I learned a ton and would definitely do it again except I think I would farm out the shower tiling next time. I easily have probably 50-60 hours into that damned shower.
A ton of good DIY reality stories came out of doing this remodel, including, but not limited too:
- termite damage
- Finding a roaches nest in the wall behind the toilet and spending no less than 2 hours killing ~75 roaches with a shoe.
- having a faulty Lowe's angle valve blowout from the toilet supply line and flooding the entire bathroom.
- Buying the wrong divert valve for the shower (money and time waste).
- Rashes and breakouts from dealing with fiberglass insulation.
I fully intended to take pictures along the way and keep up a thread like a lot of other folks on here but once I got going I didn't take nearly that many pictures and said screw it. I do have a few along the way but here are some before and afters along with a few extra afters.
Before/after of vanity. Before shows soffit and linen closet that was removed:
Before/after of shower:
Before/after looking back towards hallway:
Where the linen closet used to be:
Sh*tter:
Shower:
[This message has been edited by Westicles (edited 4/29/2014 5:44p).]
Before: The original to the house drywall was falling down from the ceiling, the people who flipped the house back in 2008 had put in cheap builders grade material and did it half-assed and the bathroom was just overall crappy. Like a lot of houses built in the 60s, the bathroom had pointless soffits over both the vanity and the shower which made the room feel a ton smaller than it really is. There was also a massive linen closet that had doors that hardly opened and was also contributing to making the room feel smaller.
I did 100% of everything myself except for drywall which I farmed out because I was traveling for work at the time and didn't want to leave the room exposed to the attic any longer since it began getting hot. I was already pretty competent with electrical and general trim work, but the tiling was the main thing I had not done before. Luckily a good buddy had done plenty of it and was kind enough to let me borrow his tile saw and spend a weekend showing me the ropes.
Overall, I learned a ton and would definitely do it again except I think I would farm out the shower tiling next time. I easily have probably 50-60 hours into that damned shower.
A ton of good DIY reality stories came out of doing this remodel, including, but not limited too:
- termite damage
- Finding a roaches nest in the wall behind the toilet and spending no less than 2 hours killing ~75 roaches with a shoe.
- having a faulty Lowe's angle valve blowout from the toilet supply line and flooding the entire bathroom.
- Buying the wrong divert valve for the shower (money and time waste).
- Rashes and breakouts from dealing with fiberglass insulation.
I fully intended to take pictures along the way and keep up a thread like a lot of other folks on here but once I got going I didn't take nearly that many pictures and said screw it. I do have a few along the way but here are some before and afters along with a few extra afters.
Before/after of vanity. Before shows soffit and linen closet that was removed:
Before/after of shower:
Before/after looking back towards hallway:
Where the linen closet used to be:
Sh*tter:
Shower:
[This message has been edited by Westicles (edited 4/29/2014 5:44p).]