Remodeling & Writing in Southern California: Master Bathroom

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Master Bathroom - Part One

When I moved into my house, it had two bathrooms, and each of those had a two-sink vanity (but only one electrical receptacle), and a bathtub. The old master bedroom has become my home theater, so the bedroom across the hall (on the front of the house) will become the new master bedroom, and the bathroom next to it will become the new master bathroom. It had one small half-circle, non-opening window over the bathtub. The toilet in this bathroom was okay, a 1.6-gallon flush model, although the first time I lifted the lid, I discovered the seat had become detached somehow and had gone missing. (Another item on the list for Home Depot!)

The tub tile was, shall we say, scary, and the tub no better, so it had to go, along with that long two-sink vanity. The toilet in the other bathroom was an antique 3-gallon flush model, and since that was the bathroom I would be using for awhile, I pulled the 1.6-gallon American Standard and moved it to the other bathroom, and took the antique to the dump. Time for demolition!

I always loved houses with basements for easy access to the house's mechanical and electrical systems, and loads of unfinished space for projects. Out here, in the land of eternal summer, I ended up with a house built on a concrete slab. So all the drain pipes are buried under concrete. All the things that would need drains would be needing them in a different location in my plans. Not looking forward to that!

Master bathrooms are entered from master bedrooms, and not from main hallways, that's just the way it is. So I knew the doorway to the hall was going away. And I had need of that door elsewhere. With the tub and toilet hauled away, and the door removed to its new location guarding my pottery studio, I found I had an empty space I wanted to fill, and new drywall was going up as part of my new kitchen work. I couldn't close off the doorway entirely, because I didn't have my new doorway to the bedroom yet, and there was the matter of that entirely too long vanity that needed some way to get out. Half a doorway would do just fine, thank you.

And my new bathroom stayed like this for a long time while I focused on other projects. Procrastination, as I continued to think about getting that nine-foot-long mirror out of there, and blasting through the concrete looking for drain pipes. I started taking out the tub in August 2013, worked a little in March 2014, a little more in April, before moving aggressively (?) on the project in May. In the meantime, the old bathroom was home for my cats' litter boxes and new window storage.

I finally decided to install the new bigger window as a way of putting off the concrete bashing. I figured I needed the extra light and fresh air before I could do that nasty work. So out with the last of the drywall, insulation, nails and screws, and extraneous copper water supply lines and ABS drain pipes, etc. Cut an opening in the outside wall, and a doorway to the bedroom (for the pocket door), and frame for the new Andersen slider—four feet wide and three feet high (rough opening). I am going to put the new vanity unconventionally under the window (mirror on the side), and the four foot by five foot shower at the other end of the long bathroom (toward the inside of the house).

The window installation was straightforward. I removed the ugly masonite shingles from the outside of the sheathing, then installed the window with sticky rubber membrane flashing to keep water out, and then replaced the shingles. After I replace the rest of the windows on the front of the house, I will pull off all the shingles and apply stucco (which covers the sides and the back of the house—strange they thought those press-board shingles were apparently the prestige siding material).