Renovating Mom's Bathroom

Greeting fellow Steemians. For those that don't know I am a VA Class 'A' contractor with all the endorsements that would allow me to legally General Contract- Build- a sky scraper in VA. But alas I specialize in premium kitchen and bathrooms- this time I'm redoing mom's bathroom.

The garden condo she lives in is built like a bomb shelter and literally was a fallout shelter for the area. Concrete slab construction including lots of 4" CMU masonry walls on the INTERIOR- like the walls between rooms- with plaster on them- absolutely rock solid construction superior to most anything we build these days.

It almost makes me sad to demo this bathroom seeing the solid old school craftsmanship that when into the bathrooms in this building. But alas it's time for an upgrade and I mean to create one beautiful bathroom for my mom. She has selected some excellent stone and this baby is going to be a masterpiece- grateful that it will be my mom enjoying it! Redid her kitchen a few years ago- super nice and she loves it.

OK so I'm a week and a couple days in to project- my plumbing and electrical rough ins are complete- when that occurs then I'm full press on getting the shower opening completed so my custom frameless awesome Moroccan shower glass door guy can come and measure and order the glass. O don't do kits for shower doors- that's the difference between a premium shower and some unsightly petrie dish of a shower door. You'll see - makes a huge difference to the crisp, professional finish of the job- been doing glass with this guy for 5 or 6 years- he's a cool cat- easy to deal with- stable pricing- always delivers on time and stands behind his work- he's my BEST sub. But all my subs are good or they don't remain my subs : ) But they don't come cheap- except when they give their regular customer GC a break on his mom's bathroom : ) Mom loved that- my plumber did hers for 1k less than his normal charge : )

I probably do three posts on this renovation- keep in mind this is a very challenging bathroom that requires lots of extra labor due to it's rock solid 'mud pan' tile application- took three days for demo alone when normally in post 50's construction, I can do that in less than a day- and this was hard work moving hundreds of pounds of all tile and mortar- covered in dust the whole time BUT it's a great way to get buff in three days!

If you don't own a heavy duty chipping hammer (most don't) then do yourself a huge favor and rent one- you will spend a week in an old school mud pan tile bathroom on manual demo with a chisel and hammer - I picturing my Hilti unit here- prob cost like $1,300 these days so def worth renting as opposed to buying. This is only a critical tool if demoing old school mud pan tile work.

Anytime I'm doing tile demo I want my tile demo bags- the problem with regular heavy duty trash bags is they get punctured and compromised by the sharp tile- and also easily overloaded to where they become unmanageable. To solve that problem I purchase the woven sacks from Lowes for about $.50/ piece. The sharp edged tile cannot puncture the woven bags and they are of the perfect size to prevent weight overloads. Note their size and don't load up bigger demo bags as you will find them far to heavy to manage properly.

Ideally you also want a round point and square point shovel . Round point does well in a pile of debris- square point is needed in final clean up- or a good dust pan will suffice.

when doing a job like this- veery dusty and dirty- you def want a waxed based sweeping compound- helps to significantly cut down on dust during demo and clean up.

You definitely need a sprayer for both demo and wall reconstruct- you can buy one worthy at HD for $20

Ok so maybe I'll make this a 4 part series- my fingers grow weary

Here's a couple of pics of the rock solid bathroom we'll be demoing

Demo details to come- stay tuned