Continuing on with my handyman learning explorations, next up after the basement was the bathroom. Aside from the usual making things exactly how you want and adding value to the house, my motivation is to basically learn by doing and consistently improve.

With my limited handyman skills these projects turn out to be a challenge, and to make it tougher I have high design expectations and a limited budget. (This one was $2500 including tools!) I'm of the mindset that if you throw in a $1000 faucet, any space will look good, but where's the challenge in that? Since as it turns out I know nothing about bathrooms, both my Dad and Uncle helped me through some tiling tough spots to avoid any giant blunders. Also the footprint of the bathroom would remain the same, so not as extreme a project as building one from scratch!


The existing bathroom was always a big annoyance. Here it is on moving day and right before starting. Dark and cream coloured everything, pedestal sink with no storage, wainscotting all over, temperamental toilet (that I replaced before the start) and acrylic surround with cracked tub. Not functional, and even if I was into the antique style, all of the elements together did not make sense.


Started to crack into things here to peek at what was being hid. Sort of like TV home shows, you never find anything good.


Lots of different huge gaps to fill later. The area behind the shower used to be a bedroom closet that was switched over. Filling all the gaps would have been too much work so it got covered. Behind the shower surround it was just the green drywall but I didn't really find anything completely crazy.


Had a fun time squeezing the tub out of there (and the new one in later). Walls looked okay...electric probably shouldn't have been thrown right beside the water lines but I'm just going to ignore that. The custom made tub overflow drain curve was pretty special. Luckily I have access in the basement bathroom ceiling to work on the drain. And it's good if you have a deck to pitch all your debris onto...tearing things out makes so much trash.


Even though I tried to get a tub exactly the same size, it wasn't exact since the back edge was shorter. The walls had to be built out in varying degrees with no margin of error since the tiles would have to overhang the tub lip. Working with Durock was a hefty task. I figured maybe a day and it took 3 or 4 to get the shower walls up. I used a special scoring tool to cut the cement sheets and it was pain-staking to get the holes in for the plumbing. I had my dad help lift because the sheets were so heavy. I couldn't hold them up and drill in, plus flatten out the bowing myself.


Felt good to get past this stage, little did I know how much work tiling would actually be.


I thought tiling would take a few days and it took more. Like a lot more. Since I knew nothing about it, I received an instructional from my uncle while getting the first row on the large wall set-up straight. Starting out level is really important. So is getting the mortar mixed right because otherwise it gets real sloppy. Mixing can be intimidating at first, but I grew more comfortable with it.

The main trouble in working with 12x24" tiles is that on a wall that isn't perfect, you have to worry about getting your tiles level, level with each other, and flush level, all at the same time, while covered in mortar. With various curves in the wall it becomes impossible. And once you see maybe a tile a row down from the day before needed to come out a bit, to make the next row easier, there isn't anything you can do about it. Plus throw in getting your cuts perfect and the tiles themselves have slight size variances. I picked up a 24" tile snapper which for $200 was a good investment.


I spent a lot of weekends sitting, or standing on the edge in the bathtub covered in mortar (your hands get dry and gross. The bathroom gets hot) ) trying to get things right. Several three day weekends I pretty much didn't leave the bathtub. I averaged a couple rows per 6 hour shift or so. Not my ideal speed, but if you're taking the time to renovate, it has to look decent. Made the mistake of putting a tile in at the top with the grain pattern facing the wrong way and had to switch that out, so something else to watch out for.


I arrived at a problem in getting the sides level while matching up the back wall. The shape of the tub wasn't level and it wasn't sitting perfect either. But the lip of the tub the tiles have to overlap gives no wiggle room. The solution was to rent a big ass tile saw for a day and have my uncle try and rip cut razor thin toothpicks from the tile. It did eventually work and we are able to get the other first rows in place and level.



I proceeded on with the tiling which went quicker on the shorter walls. Still time consuming though because as you go up you have to keep wiping off all the mortar drips and keep the tiles clean.

For the plumbing holes I read a lot about various ways to muck about... just pay the money for diamond tile hole cutters ($40 each). They worked great...leave it dry at first otherwise they'll spin out of control on the drill and scratch up the tile. Make a little indent and then keep it wet while you drill away and lock your arms in place.

I tried to keep things tidy but of course I had to fish out dried in spacers everywhere before grouting. It needed maybe half a box of grout for the whole shower. I didn't want to risk messing it up myself, having chugged through all that tiling. But as a team of 3 the grouting went fast and we got it all done in one afternoon. And sponge, sponge and cheesecloth all day long until it looks nice and clear.


Fixtures were almost straight forward. Except for the valve...I aligned the hole real close for the top screw, and the new valve cover for some reason had sort of a circular lip on the back of each screw hole, so it wasn't sitting flush. I almost returned it, but instead wasted a bunch of time grinding down an indent by hand so that it would sit okay. The other plumbing holes were sealed up with silicone.


The first shower head I got wasn't the right height, but I found another solution. I tried to reuse the spout but ended up getting a new one of that too. Also did all the edge caulking of the tub. Some debate about the siliconized grout in constant wet space... I felt that the lingo meant no good for underwater but fine for shower. In some spots it has been good, but silicone seems better in other spots.

Plumbing the tub underneath was fun. Once I sat down with all the piping and made sense of it, I was able to piece together what I needed. Even though you test and dry fit, it is stressful when you get to the actual glue stage. My connections were all fine but I was still getting a tiny drip from the p-trap upper like 4 days later. I reconnected using lots of pipe dope and that did the trick though I monitored it for several months anyway due to paranoia.


Putting in a new vanity went smoother than expected. It felt great to disconnect and pitch the old pedestal sink. Getting the vanity structure in place with the fixture and water connected etc was fine. Of course trying to use the plumbing for the drain was about an inch off and it was the brass kind due to the pedestal sink. With no room for adjustment I had to get rid of it and start fresh from inside the wall. A couple trips to the store, finally bringing pieces with me to figure out what I needed did the trick, and it was smooth from there. I used dope on all appropriate connections and had no leaks.


It was a little over two months up to this point, and after a Christmas break I started to tackle the walls. Aside from various large gaps in former closet space behind the shower, the wainscotting left lots of nail holes and was covering poorly peeled wallpaper. I ventured that it would be quicker to mud it all, rather than attempt a clean removal. It was a good tub of mud, but drawing from my basement experience, I was not worried about this stage. You'll note we are keeping the flooring here...not my first choice but in decent shape so it didn't make sense for the budget to replace.


Got everything mudded up pretty good, probably 3-4 coats. You can also see a more modern light replacing the old one here.


Sanding is the worst part. Good arm work out at least after a full day.


Checked everything over, and since it looked decently smooth, after getting floor and ceiling trim up, painting was ready to begin.


Painting over dark colours is really annoying. You can see how effective the primer coat was.


It felt refreshing to finally get the colour on. How I hated that old cream colour. So much better! Paint plus primer in one gives really good coverage over darks. We debated over various whitish colours..there are way too many... I would have liked darker but needed contrast from the tile.
We picked out a matching shower curtain here too... would have loved a glass shower panel, but I have zero confidence that it wouldn't eventually have someone fall into it.


Had to hang out the bathroom for some hours while the pocket door dried... but since that's where I was every weekend, no problem. You can also see here, the backsplash glued up. Tiling a small space is much less work. Would have looked nice all the way around the room, but that's just crazy.
I had a hard time finding something with colours that could also be adjusted to the size needed without requiring a saw, hence the small square grid which worked perfect.


New vanity light went up next. The first one we got looked bad, and didn't really fit, and I had a crazy time getting it secured into the box. Much happier with the replacement we found (of course a third trip to the store was required since one light was broken). I'm not super happy with a few of the lines and bumps around the light...hadn't been sure how to handle removing the oldest light and then painting and getting to the new light, so I just painted around with the old one in place. The light we stuck with is smaller so didn't quite cover it all.


Got to work on the custom built storage area. I struggled to find something that was an exact size, and settled on this smaller cabinet instead. Picked up a piece of cabinet top and cut it to size and dropped it down on the brackets. Had to to get a little creative when securing some of this. To the right of the cabinet I made an access panel with a piece of the old shower surround, so I wanted things in the area to remain slightly flexible if needing to get in there ever.

Also got around to grouting the vanity backsplash. Attention was required to make sure all the little square joints were properly filled.


Things are starting to look finished now, the pile of receipts was getting massive (3 trips for every one item needed uggh... nobody figures this time into the project) and the pile of tools in the room next door was thinned down to just the essentials.


Shopping for and installing various decor items at this stage. I cut and stained some wood shelves out of old wood, installed a glass shelf over the vanity and found some bamboo accessories to match.
Put up the vanity mirror...we finally decided on the simple small one here, as well as towel racks etc. All that fun stuff.


I installed the larger mirror in the alcove with some wood tones too. Finalized the cabinet by securing and trimming in different parts and some quarter round on the counter. Leveled and filled out the light switch that was sticking out as well.


Tons of trimming and working on joints and caulking different stuff. Like multiple days of work on it. I don't know if it's just me or if everyone needs pretty much every piece of trim and gap smoothed to feel comfortable. Finally got the giant gap at the edge of the shower done with multiple pieces and caulking. White and clear silicone, white acrylic, white foam all got used in different spots and touch-up paint over afterwards equals lots of green tape.


And voila! A new fresh feeling bathroom. Total project time about 5 months, mostly weekends. Overall I'm happy with the end result, especially compared to what was there. Getting better with tools like saws and stuff too. Lots of things aren't perfect... some of which I learned a lot and would improve on next time and others I probably couldn't ever get just right no matter what. But it fits in fine with a small old house and a small bathroom. Always have to keep in mind to steer clear of the flipper overkill. Massive amounts of money and gleaming modern perfection would make no sense here, so in that regard, I got things just where I wanted them. On to the mega deck project!