Basement Bathroom Renovation

October 15, 2014

Basement Bathroom Renovation

Hello Everyone!

Yes, it's been a while since we last visited and updated our Soos News. So, let's move forward past all the moves and activities of the last 4 years and start here.

Our recent completed project which I'm happy to share is a project that can make or break a marriage. There were numerous moments of frustration. Fortunately, for us, it not only kept us together but we learned to work with our strengths to get the project completed!

So, when we moved into our house last year, we knew we wanted to get the bathroom done. Thank goodness, the man kept nudging me that it was time to start the project back at the beginning of the year, 4 months after having moved in. He started initial design. Finally, I came on board in Spring and things started rolling. One thing was clear, this bathroom had to have storage and be easy to clean!

Initial Bathroom design layout done my man.

The final drawing with our specifications that was approved by the city in May, 2014

This is the BEFORE PICTURE:

Bathroom before

Bathroom after renovation

Thanks to a great reference from my friend, Carrie, we worked with Vince Scully to have our bathroom framed. He was was a wealth of knowledge and inspired us to tackle the HVAC by ourselves.

Bathroom framing

So that we could have storage, we decided to get a big recessed medicine cabinet.

Pegasus SP4582 30-Inch by 24-Inch Surface or Recessed Mount Beveled Mirror Medicine Cabinet, Clear

And of course, our framer made sure we had the studs in place above the medicine cabinet to secure our vanity light. He also included the studs below the medicine cabinet so we can secure our vanity.

After about 2 weekends of HVAC work (pipes had to travel 25'-27' from the front to the back of the house), we worked with a friend from EBC's production crew to do the electrical wiring. Hubby put in the recessed lights. We went with LEDs. It was another project that involved using cool tools like cameras that can go behind the walls / ceilings. We also learned about electrical "stuff" that we should know as homeowners but didn't. Thank you Jim!

Then, up came the drywalling. The two of us decided to do this on our own. Equipped with enthusiasm and lack of experience, we hung drywall on ceilings, walls, nooks and crannies. Lesson learned, nooks and crannies increases the amount of hanging drywall big time.

Here's the man securing the drywall to the ceiling. Notice the support bar we built to help hold up the drywall to his left. It was an arm saver.

Oh, yes, and we got to get new toys like this rotary saw? Rotozip is one of the brands out there. It helped make nice circles around the recessed lights.

Here's one of the lights after cutting the hole. Almost perfect! Not bad for a first timer.

Recessed light opening with rotary cutter

Two lights and an opening for the bathroom fan done!

We were smart enough to NOT take on the mudding and taping ourselves. Thank goodness!

So onto the floor and bath tub surround. We decided to tile both the floor and the walls for the bathtub area. There was a considerable amount of time and work involved with preparing the floor and walls. We put up cement boards on the walls and cork sheets on the floor as well as waterproofed all the surfaces (notice the pink stuff under the tiles). Yes, at one point the bathroom was all HOT PINK.

Instead of using heating vents, hubby wanted to use a new state of the art floor heating mat that we saw at an in floor heating class. This Carbonic Heating Film is super thin and heats very nicely.

http://www.carbonicheat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/roll-film1.jpg

For the floor tiles, we drove all over the area and finally found Koshi Cemento 36CE. Unfortulately, it was out of stock for 3 months at our local store. So, off to the internet and tiles were shipped to us from Georgia! I'm a so glad that we found a supplier.

Imola Koshi Cemento 36CE

http://www.specialtytile.com/

We roughed out how the tiles would lay down. Because the tiles are 24" wide and likely to have some bowing in the center, we decided to stagger them 1/3 of the way to minimize peaks on valleys. This is something else we learned!

For the bathtub surround, we found some tiles from our Local Costco that were great!

Neo Tile

Golden Select Tile

Well, they looked great at least. They were quite challenging to put up. 12X24 and 1 cm thick is very heavy so we needed a different type of cement that could hold them up. The glass and stone accents had uneven surfaces and we didn't want the grout to get stuck in the stones. So, we used a piping bag. It still required cleaning afterwards. The backing was not very stiff so the tiles were sagging and required wedges to space them properly.

Filling in grout between the accent tiles.

Note the spacers below. We had to do this to keep them from collapsing on each other. This was the back splash for the vanity.

Speaking of Vanity, I got quotes from Home Depot and Menards. Then I discovered a building supply warehouse 30 minutes away and found this little guy. It was just the ticket. I had to make a couple of compromises, 21" depth instead of the 18" and 30" high instead of 34" I had originally planned.

This is a little linen storage cabinet we created. Since our bathroom was deep enough for about 15" deep cabinet and 18" wide, we decided to semi-custom build our cabinet using an Ikea kitchen cabinet cut down to the right depth, Ikea glass and aluminum door, and a solid Maple table top from Room and Board Outlet. The hubby found time to snag the table top with all 3 kids in tow while I was out of town baking a cake.

Customized Bathroom linen cabinet

Not too shabby.

As for fixtures, we decided to go with some quality ones from the Speakman NEO colllection. Of course, we had to customize that also, because we couldn't find 18" towel and 14" towel bars.

Speakman Neo SA-1007 towel holder

Speakman Neo SA-1005 toilet paper holder

The rest of the items were based on efficiency, water usage, cleaning and comfort.

Toto Drake II uses only 1 gal per flush toilet! It also has a glaze inside that helps prevent "things" from sticking when you flush.

Delta 3559LF Trinsic Wall Mounted Faucet

Hansgrohe 36" Unica shower bar

At 32" wide and 19" deep, the Kohler Archer 5ft bathtub is great for baths and showers.

Duravit 19" Stark Sink is nice and BIG and with no sharp angles for mildew to stick to.

Here's the final product! We enjoy taking baths and showers here. The kids and future guests no longer need to run upstairs to use the bathroom while they're in the basement.

Now, some might think that we went overkill with the design since it's "just the basement bathroom". Maybe, but it's definitely something we can feel proud of accomplishing! Next year, the upstairs bathrooms....