Bathroom Reconstruction Chapter 1

My husband who is a retired railroad "water service mechanic", my oldest son who is a pipefitter and my middle son who is a laborer who does wiring and is a certified welder are reconstructing my bathroom.  I am using the term reconstruction because I don't think the word remodeling is strong enough. 

The goal is to make the bathroom "accessible" for aging in place. Lots of years ago we widened all the doors and doorways in our house. The goal was to complete the bathroom by 2018. We are slightly behind schedule. 

We started the demolition at 7:30 am on Saturday and almost immediately a squirrel climbed the power pole in our cul de sac circle, electrocuted himself and our neighborhood lost power. 

Luckily they armed themselves with high powered flashlights and soldiered on. And the lights were back on by 9:30 a.m.

Ceiling gone, drywall gone, insulation gone, tub gone, shower walls gone. Lots of mess. 

Do you like the peek hole into my utility room?

A ceiling with newly wired lights including my special request for a light in the shower. My 12 year old grandson who is super tall helped with the ceiling drywall. 

Mostly my photos look like this. A small room filled with three men. 

New insulation. And a photo of a high powered flashlight.  Spoiler alert. The shower floor is just for measurements, not installed. The "ghost" is actually a special trash bag for building materials. 

A new drain and a break for the day to allow concrete to set and dry. 

Plumbing of some kind.

Not installing a new shower wall; this was also for measurement and - squaring a wall that was so far off square. We (I mean them) rebuilt the wall to make it square. We also added additional wall studs as the supervising contractor (Mr Merry) did not feel like there were enough studs. This involved a trip to the lumber store and did put them slightly off schedule. 

At this point it was Monday morning and a kindergartener arriving for breakfast gave a round of applause to the workers, who were also here for breakfast, for a job well done (so far).

Then we discovered how unlevel the floor was under the shower floor. There was discussion of using a self leveler. The building crew took off for the home improvement store where they ran into an old classmate who is a . . . contractor. He recommended they use some foam stuff that hardens which is what he uses in home remodels. It dries in hours and hours instead of days and days.  The foam or whatever it is was purchased and . . foamed? And at some point the shower base was installed but is still drying. This put them one day behind since they did lost time squaring the room and intended to have the floor in the day before and the walls up today. 

They went back to a small plumbing job and tried to turn off the water on the hot water tank. And the knob on the hot water tank was leaking. So they went back to the home improvement store and purchased a new shut-off and other items and repaired the hot water tank. 

And hopefully tomorrow they can do what they had planned for today.  

In real time this is Monday night. I will be gone tomorrow as a dear friend is turning 70. Her husband is out of town and her daughters are . . . not celebrating her. So I will be taking her to the big city for lunch and shopping all day in the vicinity of bathrooms with water.  I have signed up to work all day Wednesday and Thursday in the church office which is in a building with a working bathroom.  I think the project works better when I am not cringing at every sound.