The Bathroom is Repaired!!!

Oh my goodness, yes! If you'll remember around Thanksgiving, I told the sad tale of trouble in my one and only bathroom - water getting behind the tile and into the plaster. Les, my friend and contractor, came over last weekend to revive it. Since Thanksgiving, this is what the bathroom sort of looked like, with plastic duct-taped all around, to keep any more water from doing what it does best - slowly eating away at solid matter.

Les started demolition on Thursday 18 February and I came from work to a totally different room. Interestingly enough, while I knew I had the pink plastic tiles on the walls, Les thought he would find lath & plaster under the tiles. Not so much. What he found was basically strawboard, which is on the inside and outside walls. My brother John saw this when he repaired the floor in my bedroom a couple years ago - a very unique building material, in my humble opinion. Les hadn't seen anything like it before, but he dealt with it. Here's a look at the "demo bathroom." If you click on the picture and make it bigger, you might be able to see the outside wall of the strawboard.

I took the day off work on Friday (making for a nice 4-day weekend for me, since Monday was our President's Day holiday :) After some discussion on Friday morning, we made a trip to Home Depot to do some shopping. I had been all over the board on thinking about what I would do in the bathroom - how far I would go with the remodel. I toyed with the idea of taking the tub out and getting an actual old claw-foot tub, but I talked myself out of that; it would have necessitated a new floor overall, and then I'd have to figure out how to get behind the tub and clean around those feet...you can see the bathroom just isn't big enough for the classic view of a luxurious claw-foot tub in the middle of the room, with plenty of space all around - well, I don't have that. I did, however, decide I would do away with most of the pink tile, since all of it around the tub was going, and I like the look of wainscotting, and put that on the wall facing the sink and toilet. I thought I would have all the pink tile removed, but when I looked at the wall with the sink, medicine cabinet, toilet, cabinet above the toilet, I thought it would be a grand pain in the patootie for not much gain, and so I kept the pink tile there, as an homage to the original room. I shopped online and then in person for a premade tub surround kit, but my bath tub is 63" and the standard size for which tub surrounds are made is 60". I did find one that was 72" and could be cut down, but when I consulted with the expert at Home Depot, he advised against it based on the placement of the window (see first photo) - there is only 4" clearance between the corner and the window frame. Home Depot recommended what he called FRP for fiberglass reinforced plastic. It is white and relatively inexpensive and Les was amenable to using it. So after four days of hard labor, Les' work was done and I have a new and functional tub surround. Now of course, there are more pictures and if you'd like to see them, you can look at webshots: http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/576808288QniFrH

Monday I painted the window frame and the wainscotting. Another interesting thing I learned was that the trim for the wainscotting and the quarter round trim on the floor is vinyl, not wood...I suppose you can still buy wood, but this was what was on offer with the FRP and it is what we bought. I'll let you know in a few years how I like it. I do love the wainscotting, though - it still gives a period look and it is white! I guess I'm just a freak about having the white in the bathroom cause it's such a small room, maybe 5' x 8' and it looks bigger somehow. Today I ironed the cloth outer shower curtain and put a new liner up. I'm getting ready for a nice soak in a little bit. All in all, I'm pretty happy with it. I still have to paint the few remaining walls but Les recommended waiting until it's a little bit warmer to do that. We are hovering in the mid- to upper-40s for the past few weeks and should be hitting 50 this week. We are thankful to the El Nino and/or Pineapple Express - whatever is bringing us a mild winter, with rain rather than snow. We sent that all to the east coast :) Of course, it has adversely affected the Olympics, but I guess that falls under the heading of "you pay your nickel and you take your chances." I understand that the next winter Olympics will be in Russia, so snow probably won't be an issue.
This is it for now. More later, and soon! J