Oldie but Goodie... Bathroom Renovations

I have a couple of friends who are or have recently gone through bathroom renovations, so, in an effort to share one of the most excruitiatingly messy events of my entire life, I'm reposting something from my old Myspace blog.

The Bathroom That Wouldn’t Die
SUNDAY, Feb. 3, 2008

Current mood: drained
Category: Life

You will notice that I've added a new default pic, one that is sure to make Rex shudder, lol. But I want to take this opportunity to salute him wholeheartedly for busting his ass to help me through this project. [this refers to a pic of Rex ripping out the old vanity. This pic to the left is the old bathroom downstairs.]

Of course, it was distressing to see him rip out the old vanity -- bleh, it was so old, tired and dark for such a small bathroom -- and i did hold my breath as we pried the old mirror from the wall... and i won't even relive the trauma of ripping out the old soffit with the light fixture. Rex and I both are totally bewildered as to why the builders of this condo put that in in the first place.

The worst thing about renovations -- aside from the mess, and the expense, and the way it just never seems to end, but instead grows and grows like a redneck's gut in middle age -- is that when you rip some of this stuff out, you see just how badly constructed your home is to begin with. You discover there is not a single right angle anywhere. And somehow seeing the skeleton of the room makes you shiver as you realize just how insubstantial your biggest life-investment really is. 

Gone are all your illusions of the stability and solidity of the very shell of your life. It's just a bunch of matchsticks, two-by-fours and sheets of drywall that crumble under a hard stare. And you get to see just how nasty the underside of things are, and how many spiders are living in your walls. What exactly are those spiders living on, anyway? I don't even want to think about it.

I've completely exceeded my expected budget for this, which is being funded my mother, otherwise my unemployed ass would not be doing this at all. I found an incredibly cheap vanity (sitting in the living room) and when i realized I could save money on the formica vanity top (also still sitting in the living room), I splurged just a little bit on a fabulous new sink (currently sitting in the backseat of my car).

It was only after I'd had the vanity cut to fit the new sink that i realized the awful truth. The new sink would require a new faucet -- and not one of the less expensive basic faucets, oh no. It only takes an 8" center set lavatory faucet, 90% of which cost over a $100. I found a discontinued model for $86 and counted myself fortunate.

Yikes. I'd fallen into the first renovation trap. Unforeseen consequences always cost more money.

In ripping out the soffit, we found that the utterly stupid way it was constructed would also require a new section of ceiling and side walls that would have to seamlessly flow into the rest of the ceiling and walls. Only after we'd cut the new wallboard did we realize that the old wallboard was 1/8" thicker than the standard wallboard we'd bought. If you don't think 1/8" is very much, you've never tried to make walls meet with any kind of mutual agreement. 

I spent a week up to my elbows in wall mud, mostly on a step ladder trying not to get great blobs of joint compound in my eyes and hair. Luckily, I wear glasses and so my eyesight was not imperiled; dried wall mud does in fact come off of glasses with a chisel, and the hair will grow back. I went through a gallon of joint compound.

And the sanding between the layers, and the final sanding -- oh my god the utter mess. A fine mist of eye-scratching, nose itching dust that somehow manages to get in every corner of the house. I stayed up past 1 am the night i finally finished all the sanding, washing everything, dusting everything, because i simply could NOT STAND IT for a moment longer.

Next misery came from trying to make the new ceiling texture match the old. This, of course, is impossible. And so the entire ceiling -- now mysteriously expanded to the size of a football field -- had to be redone. More mud and paint to be picked out of my hair. You can see a pic of my ceiling work -- it may not be the Sistine Chapel, but I'm damned proud of the final outcome. Of course, i can still see the seam, but i'm okay as long as i remember to squint slightly whenever I look at it.

In an effort to recoup the faucet miscalculation, I had to give up my dreams of track lighting with two super cool pendant lights on either side of the new mirror. Instead, I went with a generic light fixture. It ain't very pretty, but it is nice and new and clean and lights the bathroom much better than the old bare bulb fixture that was ensconced in the old stupid soffit. 

As an added bonus, since the wiring was now exposed, Rex put in the long-discussed and desperately needed light fixture in my adjoining closet. With the new light, i found things i forgot I even owned.

Then, there are the things that you don't know you need until you're in the middle of it all and realize: you don't have enough of the right color paint; you need new electric boxes and switches for the closet; sandpaper; not just tile, but mortar, grout, spacers, grout sealer and a new transitional bar for the doorway; wall seam tape; a new wax ring for the toilet, which may yet require new bolts because the old ones are so badly corroded; new shoe molding for the whole room, because the old stuff broke and warped and splintered and the original nails are completely rusted and unremovable; new burst-proof supply line for the sink and toilet; paper face masks because sanding the bathroom is like standing in the middle of the Sahara in a dust storm, making breathing a health hazard and causing you to blow really gross snot blobs for the rest of the day, assuming you can stop sneezing long enough; a ceiling texture brush because there is no way to make a ceiling look like anything except some mutant paper mache made by a developmentally impaired fourth grader without one (and believe me, I tried.)

None of that stuff is expensive, but a dollar here, five bucks there, twelve bucks back here again -- it adds up. And one more trip to Home Depot, I may kill myself, if i don't kill the ignorant employees I always seem to find first.

We won't even mention all the tools I would have needed without Rex's extensive collection of masculine toys. Not just ordinary things like pry bars, hand saws, mud- and grout applicators, and a heat gun for removing linoleum; but things I didn't even know existed, like a pin gauge for making a template of the cuts needed for tile around molding. Oh, and the frightening tile saw. Diamond blades for the Dremel to sand the rough edges of cut tile.

But tonight the tile was finally laid. Which reminds me of the other side effect of this project: a drop-off of the sex drive. After a day of doing this manual labor, neither Rex nor myself has the energy. Not to mention that a sweaty, dusty woman with joint compound in her hair and paint smeared on her elbows is hardly an enticement to amorous exploits.