The Unavoidable Bathroom Remodel

     Ok I need to take a step back in time just a bit here. I have been avoiding this one and I don’t really know why. Well, that’s not entirely true. I know why. It is directly tied to the flashbacks that are associated with this project. I’ll explain in a moment. 

The Plan

As I explained a few weeks ago, we needed to do a complete overhaul of this bathroom adjacent to the kitchen. I also mentioned it was located under the stairs with a hobbit sized door. Upon first entering the bathroom to the right, below a small chicken-sized window( I don’t think I’ve ever compared a window to a chicken before. was a bathtub… a chicken-sized bathtub. You know the phrase half-bath… well this was a half bath-tub. Apparently it was a common thing in Italy back in the day because It wasn’t the last I’d see. It had an upper section and descended where the drain was to form sort of a chair where people could sit while bathing themselves.  Here’s how the game plan looked.

A portion of this project was done when we moved into the house since the flooring was a part of the kitchen floor system. In this tiny room, I needed some space for the laundry. I had an idea to create a lower storage area and to life the laundry up to a level where we wouldn’t have to bend to load it. It would also help with size issues of the bathroom. Being raised in this way meant that the door of the washing machine could freely swing overtop of the sìnk without restriction.

We had a few months before winter hit but I made sure to finish the floor heating to make sure we had a good source of heat in the house. I would place the access panel to the pump under the laundry bench. It would be a little difficult to access in the future, but it would be out of the way. 

Here are the steps of the project:

Step 1: Remove horrible chicken-sized bathtub. Check!

Step 2: Remove old wall tile 

Step 3: Upgrade drain and water pipes

Step 4: Install water pump and temperature reducer for floor heating system.

Step 5: Place floor heating and tile with kitchen remodel.

Step 6: Install bench to support laundry

Step 7: Place wall tiles

.

Material and Labor

Most of the materials for this section of the remodel were grouped into the kitchen budget and won’t be displayed here. I did need some drain pipes, water lines, a pump, as well as the typical tile and grout. The more innovative portion would require some old metal pipes and long terracotta floor bricks. I made the laundry bench by creating three support beams with three long pipes and spanned floor bricks across them. Just before cementing them I decided to add some 2 cm sponge insulation I had from the floor heating project between the brick and pipe to reduce noise from the movement of the laundry above. I imagine after it was cemented in, it wouldn’t be moving a whole lot, but it added an extra buffer to reduce vibrations over time. 

We picked some tile up from Leroy Merlin again and though I am to this day not so convinced about the color and style, it does look nice. The sink we bought from ‘Mondo Convenienza’ that has the slogan, ‘our strength is the price’. To me that means: ‘Our strength is not quality.’  We used it in our upper bathroom initially planning to replace it with a different sink when we found what we were looking. You know what that means right? Yup, it’s still in the upstairs bath and we’ve never felt the necessity to have a bathroom downstairs.

Cost Breakdown

The costs on this project are really only for a pump and tile since the floor was covered in the kitchen budget. 

Here’s the breakdown:

• Drain Pipe:       borrowed
• Metal ½” pipe : Taken from the kitchen remodel
• Wall tile: €  220
• Grout: €    20
• Paint: €    20
   

As always, He’s our running total investment on the property.

Final Thoughts

Sounds simple, right? 

You remember when I said I was avoiding this update? It wasn’t as simple as it sounds. As far as project size goes, it really wasn’t so significant. However, because of the size of the space the difficulty was increased immensely Seriously ever since this project I tell people I live in a cave. My whole perspective regarding my house has diminished. I can’t wait to move away! Ok, I’m exaggerating just a little, but I really do tell people that I live in a cave. 

Really I’m just complaining. I could have paid someone else to do the job for me, but in my efforts to save money and create value, I opted to hunch over in this confining space myself. Since the bathroom is accessed through the kitchen, it was difficult to keep the mess contained as well so I ended up bathing in grout and mortar. 

Due to the position I was forced to work in, I started to care less about cleaning off my gloves and tools between each tile. Overtime my gloves were completely covered which was evidenced by the grout handprints on the face of each tile. This was by far one of the least conservative jobs I’ve done so far in regards to waste and cleanup. 

At then end of the project I ran out of joint material and opted to just install the laundry  and hide the remaining joints that were missing grout. I’d of course finish the job, but not for another year. Luckily my wife handled the tile cleanup since I was past caring by the end of placing those tiles. Respect to the tile layers of the world. You are a strong breed!

Who knows if we’ll ever use the bathroom, but at least it adds a little value when we sell it in the future.