Bathroom Renovations

Well, it's been almost 2 weeks since the fun began in our bathroom. Thus far, we have ripped out the floors all the way through to the basement, removed all of the drywall and the ceiling. We're still trying to decide what to do about the window. We need new windows in the entire house, so it may be more economical to wait and replace it with the others.

We have re-plumbed the entire house (fresh water and sewer), and, thanks to a little detective work, we have also replaced the water line into the house from the street due to a gushing leak...which wasn't gushing until we wiped the rust off of the pipe...then it was gushing. Bryan has discovered a piping called PEX which has made it so much easier to accomplish - very little joint work, and relatively inexpensive (compared to copper...).

We have been living in John and Karen's camper while the water was not working and while we have no toilet or shower. It has been so nice to be able to escape the disaster area that our entire house has become and sleep in a cool place with no nails or dust. I've been able to wash dishes in there too. Now, however, we do have water back in the rest of the house - just not in the bathroom, obviously, so I can cook again, and do laundry (not that I was really missing the later, but our clothes were emitting an odor that was not exactly pleasant).

The last couple of days have involved an interesting process of jacking up the existing floor joists and screwing new joists into them. The floor had sagged at some point in the past, and the previous owners had added an extra support under the house. Now, the floor has sagged more between the wall and that support (about 8 feet apart). Soooo we are now attempting to get the floor more level so that our tile won't crack when we put it in soon. It's exciting to see progress being made now - up to this point we have torn out a lot but not really begun to put the room back together.