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Planning the Attack
The down stairs bathroom was a disaster when we moved in. You could tell that it had been part-way renovated many times. The floor vinyl
was pealing up. The sink was smaller than the vanity. The hardboard shower walls were flaking away. The entire floor was spongy and the
ceiling had a lovely hue of blue-green mold and a smell of damp mold leaching from the walls. It was a disaster and we decommissioned it
right away.
You probably remember this scene from the snake story. This debris was a nasty mixture of shredded newspaper, fiberglass, animal waste, insect egg casings and, oh yea!, a
live snake!
I finally gave up carrying the debris out and while staring at an unbelievably heavy cast iron tub, I decided to rip the wall out. Much
to my surprise it was only made of 2x2 scrap wood and practically fell out on it's own. You can sort-of see how this bath was originally
an outside walk area between the kitchen and the downstairs office. The door into the bath was originally the outside door. If you opened
this door and the front door you would get a perfect cross breeze. An important cooling architectural design in old houses.
It took two guys and a crowbar to tip this tub out onto the ground. I hooked the backhoe up to the tub with a chain through the drain hole
and dragged it to the back yard. The whole time the front wheels kept popping off the ground like hydraulics on a low rider. I ended up
busting it to pieces with a ten pound sledge to get rid of it. Do you know if you place even incredibly large objects on your truck tailgate
and take a fast exit off the highway, when you get to where your going, guess what, NO TUB!
One of the scary things about this floor was how easy our feet crushed through when we stepped where the tub had been. It is amazing
that when this tub was filled with water (something we never did), it didn't just crash right through to the crawl space. If it wasn't
for the new header boards and block foundation, what was left of the bath would have just fallen out as a pile of rubble. Shortly after
this shot I rebuilt the back wall. It was mid-November after all. At this time we were suffering through $700.00 heating bills.
The floor came up in a flash. Mainly due to the extensive rot. I dug away the dirt to see what condition the pipes were in. I was
surprised to see that the main drain was PVC considering the waste stack was cast iron.
Tom diggin' the hole! Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt headed down the main hall and off the front porch. Close to 36 inches
of dirt was eventually removed in a 6'x14' room.
This was totally scary. The cast iron waste stack was held to the PVC with a glob of concrete. And for good measure why not push the
hot & cold water lines into the concrete as well. The copper had already started to pit from the corrosive nature of concrete on
copper. All of the copper lines were made of soft bendable copper in order to install it without getting under the house. The soil
under this bath was so high it was actually touching the center beams.
Lots and Lots of concrete. I poured footers running down both sides of the bathroom. On the common wall with the kitchen I put two 4x4
square tubular steel columns inside the wall to support a steel beam that will in turn support the future master bath.
Yet another tunnel. This shot shows a new tunnel that goes under the downstairs hallway. The tunnel is the main connector to the wiring
closet. You can see here four of the conduit pipes that will hold phone and computer network wires. All these conduits run along the
tunnels on their way to the wiring closet.
Can you say "20 ton jack"? As part of the over-all house leveling plan I had to lift this beam about two inches. In the greater scheme
of things this was a small lift. Parts of the kitchen was lifted 4 to 5 inches.
Here you can see the back half of the bath. The concrete footers and wall supports ore in place. Here I have set two of the four
beams in place with one cross beam. The right-hand half will support the shower.
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