When Moving Into Your Dream Home Hits Some Bumps

Stacy Davis
by Stacy Davis
2 Materials
$18000
30 Days
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Several months ago, we bought a house that we considered to be our dream home. It appeared all the bathrooms had been recently updated. So while there were repairs and work to be done, the bathrooms looked ok. Almost immediately problems began. My husband went to take a shower on the first day and my son ran up from the basement yelling, “Stop!” Water was coming through the floor of the shower which was the ceiling above my son‘s bed. No worries, we got the home warranty. We had the repair man come out and he determined that it was a cracked shower pan and not a broken pipe. The home warranty covers broken pipes but not cracked shower pans. icon First, we were just going to fix the shower pan which meant the walls also had to be redone and the best quote was $2,000. Ugh, that is lot of money to recreate a bathroom that I don’t like. So, since there were a few things I didn’t like about the bathroom anyway, we decided on a full master bath remodel, which is new for me. It took four months of going upstairs and using the kids’ bathrooms before we could afford to start. In this post, I want to share with you what to expect, good reasons to to hire a contractor and helpful hints along the way. Even though this isn’t a diy job for me, there are lots of things in this post that can also help you if you are diying your bath. 🛀 For bath remodeling ideas, you can check out my Pinterest board Username SDavis245 and the board is Bathroom Update. I have spent years filling this board with ideas for the one day when we remodeled a bathroom.

Here is the shower that from a distance looks ok.

Demo day arrives. I removed anything that I could before the workers arrived, towel bars, shelves, toilet paper holders and outlet covers. Make a list of what the workers are to save. Do you want to reuse the current vanity and faucets? Shower fixtures? 🚿 Doors? Have a place where they can store these until needed. You will also need space to store new things going in such as, Sheetrock, 2 by 4’s, new fixtures.

This was the end of day one. one big item on my wishlist was enclosing the toilet in a water closet and creating a larger shower than the current one. Given the dimensions of my bath, the only way to do this was make the bath larger. Two walls of the bathroom backed to our master bedroom closet and our office. Neither of those rooms could afford to have any space taken from them. I realized that one wall backed to a fairly large hall closet. I decided we needed a bigger bath more than a hall closet.

The opening in the wall with the yellow broom handle is where there used to be a wall to the hall closet. The other photo is after the shower was completely removed. Those holes in the floor, were from the previous homeowner and he had various pieces of Sheetrock screwed in to build it up. icon Be sure to cover these holes if possible during the demo process. Below, I explain why.

The top left photo shows one of several holes in the floor. The top right is a sink vent where the previous owner cut a stud and buried it in a wall. The bottom left is why you should cover these holes. One morning, we heard a loud crash and the cat came out looking totally disheveled and his tail was huge. My husband said the cat had fallen into one of the holes in the floor. I told the cat that I think he just used up one of his lives. Little did we know. My son went to his room which is below the master bathroom later that day to find a large square of Sheetrock and a board laying on his bed. In the bottom right, you can look through the floor and see his pillow below. He had been sleeping in another room because of the construction thank goodness. The reason the door wasn’t shut to the bathroom was because the door and door frame were entirely removed to get the vanity out.

On left layout before remodel/Right Option #1

On the left is the set up we began with. I used a free app on my iPhone to lay it out. On the right is one option that I am currently considering.

Two more options

In summary my remodel wishlist was 1. Have a bigger shower 2. Have a curbless shower 3. Create a water closet for toilet 4. Replace gray tub and toilet with white ones 5. Have a chair height or comfort height toilet 6. If budget allows, move entrance to closet from master bedroom to within the master bathroom.


My final tip is prior to demo day, move your bath items and anything needed from master bedroom and closet to another area of the house. Foolishly, I moved all my bath items and bedroom items to our master bedroom closet. With workers constantly carrying out tile, fixtures and trash , i couldn’t get to my closet easily. So remember, during the demo process you lose access to your master bath, bedroom and closet.

Today‘s find was all of these studs were cut through on a load bearing wall supporting the second story floor joists. In my opinion, it was done so that they could add medicine cabinets. icon This will be corrected.

Here is another tip, take notice of your interior doors when ordering you tub and vanity. One thing that I had never realized is that all the interior doors in my house are smaller than average. They are about 24 inches across. The tub just barely made it through the interior doorways. To take out the bathroom doorway is one thing but having to take out bedroom doorway too or maybe bring it in a window, you might wish you had just ordered a different sized tub.

Soon! We will have a working master bathroom. We moved in at the end of August and have been going upstairs to shower since then. My husband is having a complex foot surgery on both feet and won’t be able to do stairs for some time. I can hardly wait to see it completed.

I will try to take this shot again when the light is better. It has been weeks of dreary weather here. The plumbers installed the shower head today. The vanity is new from Houzz. It was determined that our old one wasn’t going to work well. It is a tiny bathroom and it was a large vanity. There is a problem with the vanity. When it arrived, half the family was suffering from the flu and we didn’t have the energy to unbox it. We thought the contractors were going to put it right in. That didn’t happen and when it was unboxed, there is a hairline crack running through one of the sinks. We are in touch with the company and I will let you. Kitchen and Bath Collection is the name of the company and they provided us with a new sink and refunded the money that it cost to have it installed. I think they did a good job of making things right.

The water closet has a barn door. This actually was necescary due to with an elongated toilet in a 3 by 5 water closet, it was determined that closing the door might be problematic. We could have had an outward swing but in a tiny bathroom without much floor space that seemed like a bad idea.

Another view with the door open. The door is still having the finishing touches made and hasn’t been painted yet. We have gone two weeks past the one month deadline and a painful $10,000 over our $20,000 budget. Major remodels are not for the faint of heart.

Short video to show several completed items in the master bathroom remodel.

I promise if we ever get see sunshine again, I’ll Take some better pictures. This is the view from the shower.

And this is the view from the tub area.

Suggested materials:
  • Freestanding Bathtub   (Houzz)
  • Tub Filler   (Houzz)
  • White 8 by 16 tile with bullnose   (Home Depot)
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  • Jennifer Jennifer on Feb 05, 2018

    It is looking beautiful, waiting to see the rest when you finish!

  • Nadine Hartman Bourne Nadine Hartman Bourne on Feb 05, 2018

    I am curious to know if you live in a state where the owner has to let know about things like this. Disclosure something or other. I'm in California, when I bought my house there was some disclosure statement that I had to wave because the house was a foreclosure that had been empty for months so the bank had no idea of any potential problems. I did pay to have a home inspector go through the house and check for things. And if I remember correctly if something in the first year had gone wrong there was supposed to have been some kind of insurance or recourse that could have been taken to fix something like this. But you got a gorgeous bathroom out of it so...

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