This Tabblo is my journal of our experiences while we have our bathroom remodeled.

Here is our existing main bathroom, as seen from the hallway upstairs looking in.  Do you see the big slanted ceiling (center of photo)?  Thats the roofline!  We have a saltbox style house and unfortunately, the slant of the saltbox happens to be in the middle of the bathroom.

This Tabblo is continued in

Bathroom Remodel  - Part II

Now, that can be a problem when you are, say stepping out of shower - watch your head!

So we decided to raise the roof (literally) and level off the ceiling, but that also made the room much bigger.  What to do with all that space?

<Shameless plug for Steven DiCampo our Architect>  He made plans of the existing design of the bathroom, as seen here, and helped us take our ideas and turn them into actual plans that we can hand off to the builder.

Remodeling a bath may not always need an architect to draw it out, but in our case, the existing bath was much smaller, and the new bath...

...will wind up being the same size as our kitchen! 

That's alot of space.

So we decided to move stuff around and make everything a bit bigger.  We made the sink a double sink.  We moved the toilet to the far corner behind a half wall.  We threw out our existing 5' tub and replaced it with a huge 6' soaking tub.

This tiny space will soon (30-45 days) be a huge new SPA bathroom!

Assuming I don't have a nervous breakdown before this is over.  No process is completely smooth and we've already had a few bumps.  We didn't want to keep the existing fixtures, for example.  So we ordered new ones, like that big 6' soaking tub.  No jets, nothing fancy, but it's BIG.  Our general contractor, Troy, recommended that we get the tub ordered as soon as possible so they can hoist it up into the bathroom while the roof is off.  That in itself sounds scary, but it makes some sense. The tub is probably too big to fit around the corner from the steps into the bathoom.  So we ordered the tub.  And waited.  And waited and called.  And called and waited.  And called every day and waited some more.  Needless to say, HomelessDepot had no clue when it would be delivered.  After more calling and waiting, we got a call from the shipper and it should be here tomorrow!  Yeay!  That's right on schedule!

Here's the outside of the house.  Note the slanted roofline on the back of the house - that's the salt box style I was referring to earlier. 

Did I mention new windows too?  Oh yeah, we ordered a double casement window for the rear wall.  This will add more light and more breeze into the bathoom.  But that's another item that's a long delivery time.  3 weeks!

Dumpster and first load of lumber delivered today!  This is Day One.

Delayed!

Project has been delayed about 2 weeks.  Framers should start mid October.

We got sick of waiting on the Framers so we decided to do a little demolition of our own.  We took apart the hall closet revealing the space where the tub will ultimately be.

Demo day!

Today they started the demolition - tearing out most of the drywall and removing most of the fixtures.

The kneewall seen here will be removed probably tomorrow when they rip off the roof, but for now, you can see the wasted space that will soon be bathroom space.  We're going to put up a dormer that will have a level ceiling all the way to the back wall, which will be positioned at the very back wall of the houseline.

The old toilet and sink are gone - to be replaced by nice new white ones.  We got the toilet that can flush a bucket of golf balls!  Not that we'll be doing that, of course...

The framers have been a problem.  We've been waitng nearly a month for the framers to come and do their thing, so the rest of the work can happen.  The framers have one reason (excuse) after another, some of them are valid and some are crap, honestly.  We weren't a priority and after a month of waiting, we fired them.  We really thought we were stuck though - starting from scratch looking for a new framer or taking alot longer for non-framer guys to put it up.  It's not a really big job, but we were lucky enought to snag another really good framer the very next day (Friday)!  Seems that the housing market has really dropped off, so alot of construction crews are sitting idle, taking up anything they can get - even weekends.... which is just what we needed.  We had other people lined up for next week, and having the framers come out Saturday/Sunday means that the schedule doesn't slip again.  It's not just us getting ansy - we need to keep an electrian, plummer, tile guy, siding guy, roofer, painter, etc. all in limbo until the walls are up....

Here it is, 7am Saturday morning and the new Framer guys are ripping off the roof!!  Time to make more coffee...

The roof is off!  They hoisted up the tub (I couldn't watch that) and now they're measuring the new windows to figure out the opening on that wall.

Did I mention the windows?  Oh yes, we wanted a double casement window set for the back wall.  You see, from the second floor of the house, you cannot see out in that direction, because it's all roof (or was...).  With the new bathroom, we figured, let's put in some nice big casement windows (to match the casement windows we have downstairs) so we get alot of light and breeze into the bathroom and throughout upstairs.  Well, once you talk big windows in a bathroom you have to consider how to get some privacy when showering and all that.  We have honeycomb blinds in the bedrooms upstairs and thought something similar would look great in the bathoom - allowing in alot of light even if the shades are down.  But those fabric honeycomb blinds won't last in a bathroom with all that moisture. 

What to do?  Well, Pella windows have this great thing - blinds inbetween the panes of glass of the window.  So the blinds stay protected from outside and inside.  No dust on them either!!  Now I want to get these windows in the bedrooms too...!

The boys ripped off the roof, put up 2 walls, and then took a break for lunch.  That's alot before lunch...!  We think it's the techno music we have blaring that's making them work so fast.  Either they really dig the tunes or they really hate them and can't wait to leave ;)

Views from out in the backyard....

I swear it sounds like they're gonna pound down the entire house.  It's really really LOUD.  Maybe they can't even hear those tunes....  Michelle ran up for a look while they were gone.  Here she's peering out from the rough opening for those casement windows.

We're all framed in!  Now to seal it up...

That little window is going to go, as is the flood light above it...

(continued in Bathroom Remodel Part II)

The rough-in is put to bed for the night.

Sealing up the back wall.

The framers made our new addition water tight and finished up the job.

If you're standing in the bathroom, this is the left side corner.  The slant you see is where the cubby cabinet used to be.  That will be removed and the tub will end up being there.

Starting from the left (above) and moving to the right, this is where the windows will be to give us some light.  Notice the vent pipe to the left of the window - the brown mark on the pipe was our roof line.  Pretty cool.  However, it gets quite stinky in the house whenever we run water (take a shower, do laundry, etc).  Speaking of showers.  We run in, wash, and run out.  Brrrrrr.

Now, you can kind of see how much space we've gained.  We actually want to get a cabinet to put in that corner about the size of the tub box as it stands.

This Tabblo is continued in

Bathroom Remodel  - Part II