Another stupid build thread from t25torx.

The overall styling in the room looks really nice - I really have a hard time making choices when I am designing a space like this.

How did you go about choosing all the colors and styles for the materials? It looks terrific!

In reply to Mezzanine:

Agreed. We've been discussing a bathroom remodel, and I just picked out those same floor tiles the other day. Good work!

The inspiration for this room actually came from a hotel bathroom. It had just one wall wallpapered, and I liked the style. I saw some metallic wallpaper on an HGTV show so I started looking online and found this wallpaper, then I matched the color for the paint. The wife wanted white subway tile, and it needed a splash of color, I looked for some accent tiles and found these at HD when I went shopping for the floor tile.

I would say just look at a bunch of pictures online and find something that stands out for you.

Big update today. As in, it's done. Took me 4 days longer than I had planned but it's all back together and usable again.

I'll start where I left off, after the floor tile and wallpaper were done I moved on to getting the door prepped while I was waiting for grout to dry.

I started by just laying the old door up against the new one, then marking my hing locations.

The bottom got marked for trimming.

Marking the hinges. Make double sure your putting them on the correct side of the door.

They make a fancy tool for the next part. But I'm cheap, so I break out my Dremmel with a routing bit and plunge collar.

I route around the outsides, then just chisel the remaining stuff away.

Check my fit. ANd then screw the hinges on.

Old flat slab door. BORING.

New 6 panel door. Not so boring, but needs some paint at this point.

I also did the hall closet door since it was an old flat door also. This one took a little more time, I had to cut the hole for the knob and latch. Needs paint.

With the floors finally dry I was able to get in and put the new toilet into place. I was too busy trying not to screw it up so no pictures. It went in without issue, thankfully. Just plopped the wax ring down, then lined up the studs and set it straight down.

Next I start measuring out where the vanity would go, and where my light would be. So with a little hesitation, I cut into my freshly painted and patched walls.

Bingo, and my wiring is right where I planned it to be.

I mounted a shallow pancake box to the stud, then wired up the light and attached it to the pancake box.

The mirror came next, centered on the light.

Moved the vanity in next and centered it on the mirror. I managed to break off the old p-trap with a falling piece of drywall, so I had to cut it down and start over.

That 6 inch tailpipe is almost too short, I may have to go back and change it for longer piece.

And that was pretty much it, I had to touch up a couple places on the ceiling and paint the vent. Then reinstall the window crank which took a little grinding after the new tiles moved it a little to the left too far. A bead of silicone around the tub and edges of the tile finished those off. last bit was installing the new towel and TP roll hangers.

Here she is.

Total Time = 2.8 weeks. I quit my job right before I started this to be able to get the house ready a lot faster, so if I budget in lost wages it adds about $2500.

Total materials budget = $1700

I really think this will help the house sell a lot faster and I should definitely get my money back out of this upgrade. From stuff I've seen online this would have cost about $10K or more if I had farmed out everything.

Nice design, nice execution and nice pace. Good chance the lady of the house will keep you around and happy.

That's gorgeous! Between you and Pat, you guys put most contractors to shame!!

Want to come up to Gainesville and redo my bathroom?!? About identical dimensions!!

Where are you moving to?

In reply to dyintorace:

Ha, thanks man. I hope whoever comes to look at our house will think so also! I'll pass on the Gainesville invite lol.

I'll be moving back to the Nashville Tennessee area. Florida's been interesting, it's been a change of pace, but I'm ready to get back to an area with a median age closer to my own.

Tomorrow I start demo on the master bath. This one will be a much tougher build, need to figure out what to do with a weird toilet/shower arrangement. When we moved in last year we were expecting to stay longer and I had planned on moving the toilet, but I don't know if I'll get the money back out for the time en effort I'll have to put into breaking up the slab to move it now.

Looks great!

Just noticing this thread now... Looks great! Makes me want to redo my own bathroom which desperately needs it. I also have a window over the tub. Only it leaks like a sieve and everything has rotted. The window is also why the bathroom didn't have a vent fan - not required if the bathroom has a window, although still nice to have.

One question - did you seal the joints of the cement board around the tub? When I installed that around the shower in the ex's house (which apparently needs a twp inspection), sealing the joints is required by local code.

You're a better man than I am. We have an upstairs bath which is small and needs renovation, but I'm just not handy at all with this sort of stuff. Right now the guys are downstairs blowing up my downstairs kitchen and bath so they can reno that stuff and it's gonna cost me a lot of dough, but I'd never be able to do it myself.

The small bathroom, maybe.

I'm gonna continue with this thread since it's all on the same lines. I started demo and reno on the master bath as soon as a I got done with the guest one here. I didn't take a lot of progress pics this time, too busy working. This one ran longer than the small bath by about a week and a half.

Here's the before shots of the old lady bath. Again this room had the 7 foot ceilings to accommodate the crappy built in fluorescent office lighting.

The hideousness of this wallpaper will haunt my dreams.

The room with the toilet and the shower had a tiny door that you could barely close and again over the shower it had the low ceiling. Also note, no bathroom fan, so all the metal in this room had a nice coat of surface rust on it.

The door to the shower/toilet room. There was no door on the main bath so I guess they decided they needed one on the old poop room.

This is what happens when I have a demo bar and a 4lbs mini-sledge

And just like that it was done! I wish. I think it took 5 weeks total of 8 hour days to get this one done by myself.

Added a sliding door to the whole room so now you can towel off without prying eyes.

I purchased new door and drawer fronts in a Shaker Style online for about 1/2 what Home Depot wanted. They also were done and shipped in about half the time HD quoted. New handles were also ordered online. I repainted the old cabinets and added a new surface by laying hardwood flooring down on top and then painting and sealing it.

Added a frame to the mirror to give it an updated look that meshed more with the rest of the room. The low ceilings are gone and new fixtures with LED lights hang in place.

This was the biggest change aside from adding a foot of ceiling clearance to the whole room. I was trying to figure out a way to make the room feel bigger and yet still keep the same layout for cost and time savings. Then it hit me. Cut that wall in half and ditch the door! This makes a huge improvement on the usability of the room. You no longer feel cramped and claustrophobic when you get out of the shower.

Shower was done up like the other bathroom. New cement board base replaced greenboard drywall, then some basic white subway tiles went on with a mosaic tile strip at eye level.

I wanted the motif for this room to be more calming and peaceful than the shiny razzle dazzle of the guest bath, so greens and soft earth tones are what I picked.

I didn't want to do a wallpaper accent wall in this room, so I chose a stencil for a minimalist addition. I wanted a japanese cherry blossom tree, but the wife wanted a dogwood, so we got a dogwood. Turned out good. She did all the walls, and ceiling paint this time. Which was nice for me since I hate painting with a roller and brush.

New vessel sinks with new faucets rounded out the vanity refinish.

So that's a wrap on that room. With reusing the vanity I saved about $1800 (96 inch vanities are not cheap). Total for this room was almost the same as the small bathroom at $1700 in materials.

Right on!!

Nice work! Where did you order the cabinet doors from?

This bathroom looks really great too - I love the vessel sinks. I redid our two bathrooms a few years back, but the vanities never got changed. I ordered two with the kitchen cabinets, so I'll have to get on that soon.

Mezzanine wrote: Nice work! Where did you order the cabinet doors from?

I ended up getting them from rawdoors.net Great turn around time, I think I had them in less than 2 weeks. I got the Shaker style in ready to paint maple, with doors bored for hidden hinges, which they included for free, they were even the soft close kind. I could not recommend them more. I wanted to get my kitchen cabinets from them, but they only do doors and drawers, no full cabinets.

With both baths finally completed it was time to start on the awful kitchen in this house. It's cramped, has that stupid low ceiling crap and it's placement essentially makes it so we never use a living area in our house. We had big plans to completely move the kitchen and the doors to the back porch to make better use of the space, but now that we plan on selling the house I changed the design to just open up the kitchen.

After looking up in the ceiling and finding none of the walls were load bearing I broke out my mini-sledge and demo-bar. This is the result.

Here's what I started with. Typical 1980's Florida kitchen.

Just knocking out this upper cabinet made a huge difference. I was originally going to keep the penensula and just put some pendant lights over it, but that plan changed.

This pantry/coat closet is going away to make room for the fridge and cabinets on the other side. I'll just be drywall-ing over this side to make it a smooth wall.

One side done.

Also scraped the ceilings of the old popcorn texture crap. That's a messy job.

Before.

After.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

One wall down, 2 more to go!

and then it's gone!

Here you can see the living room that we never used. We have a den that is our main space for hanging out, and we only used this area to hold a dining table that we never used. With my new design this space will be out main living area now. The stove is where it will sit in the new island I will be making, but will get replaced with a unit that has front controls.

The back wall of the pantry came out and I moved the fridge to where it will reside. Here you can see how low the ceiling is in the kitchen. It's a stupid design, just to use dumb lights that look like crap. This has got to go!

Aha! So this is what made them think that ceiling and light combo was a good idea! Found these all on top of the drop ceiling.

Stripped of it's drywall, the frame is ready to be removed.

About an hour later I had this.

That was pretty much all the demo I had planned. The remaining cabinets will be going away on the sink wall at a later time to keep the sink and dishwasher usable till I get the new cabinets in and ready to install.

Now it was time to reroute all this electric. I still am not done with all the electric, but I'm close. I just have the fridge outlet and the dishwasher/garbage disposal outlets to install on the walls. Then I need to cut into the slab and run my conduit to the island location, that's going to be real fun I bet.

Oh and so you guys at home know what the hell this is going to end up looking like, here's my SketchUp layout for the kitchen. I don't have all the outlets placed in the sketch, but I know where they are going.

Here's some of the electric moved back and bundled up, ready to be rerouted to the correct locations.

I needed to be able to see in here again so four IC rated recessed lights went in first.

And t25torx said let there be light! Then there was, and he said "berk yeah!"

These are LED units only drawing 9 watts each, and with no warm up time they work much better than CFL's.

I also installed some boxes for the pendant lights I have planned to go over the island.

This was a single outlet near the sink, I swapped it to a double box so I could add the switch for the garbage disposal. When I took down the little stub wall on the sink side I had to relocate all the switches and plugs over to the wall. The garbage disposal switch got moved to the left side of the sink so I won't be accidentally turning it on when I mean to turn the light over the sink on.

As you saw in the sketch, the peninsula didn't make the final cut, so here it is getting the final cut.

And lastly, with all my electric in the attic done it was time to stuff the insulation back up there so I can turn the A/C on again, it's crazy hot and humid down here already.

That's it for now. Hopefully this week I'll have all my electric done, all my sheetrock done, and will have started on removing the old tile and prepping to install the new tile.

As luck would have it, this morning the fridge stopped working, yay. The compressor or start relay is going out, not sure which. So it looks like a change from white to stainless appliances is going to happen in this reno also. Wasn't looking to spend that extra money but they will probably help the kitchen look a little more modern and help it sell better.

Interesting on the cinder block wall. You would think they would have made a little more of a gap furring it out for insulation.

That is going to be a fun time running power to the island for the range and outlets. Are you installing a overhead exhaust fan for the range? Looks better even with the walls down to the studs.

Like how the cat has a indifferent look about what's going on.

Holy crap, you move fast! I spent all day relocating electrical outlets in my kitchen, and felt like I got a lot done.

Great call tearing out that wall - There is no way to redesign in that space with it the way it was. Looks miles better already!

And thanks for the info on the cabinet doors - I'm out of old cabinets to replace doors on, but I'm sure that info will come in handy soon.

I've been busting out for sure, but that's like a week and a half of 8 hour days so don't feel discouraged. Wiring was a 2 day affair for sure and I'm still putting up lights and have to run my conduit for the range and island 110v.

I got the rang hood in today so tomorrow I'll try and get it installed. I'm busy chasing appliances at the moment, trying to get a slide in stove in white so I don't have to change out my microwave and my dishwasher, then find a new white fridge.

I love the emt in the house. I did a bunch in my garage when I built it. Inspector really liked it once he got over his surprise. Said that was the first time he's seen it used inside the walls of a garage not on the surface of the sheetrock.

I've had 1st and 2nd year apprentices tell me you can't use emt in a house. So I tell them to prove it to me in the code book and get back to work learning there craft.

I think I get the cinder block now I finally saw that you are in Florida. Makes perfect cense to me now. Want the house to still be standing when a storm comes blowing on threw.

t25torx wrote: I've been busting out for sure, but that's like a week and a half of 8 hour days so don't feel discouraged. Wiring was a 2 day affair for sure and I'm still putting up lights and have to run my conduit for the range and island 110v.

I'm so relieved! The way I read the thread, I'd convinced myself you did all that work in just a day or two.

Regarding the white slide-in: good luck... There is one here in the PNW at the Sears Outlet, but it is the only one I have seen. Fortunately I'm looking for SS, which is the norm these days anyway. Keep up the great and inspiring work!

Welp I finally found a slide-in range in white, picked it up for $200, sold the old range for $150 so not a bad deal to get what I needed.

I also got the rest of the drywall up on the ceiling main area in the kitchen.

It's starting to look like a room again and not a build site.

This area where the old closet/pantry was will come down and get a bigger piece in to reach all the way tot he new wall I will be putting up.

I also got the new pendant lights installed for over the island.

Most of my time yesterday and today were wrapped up in hunting down appliances. I still need to get a new Side-by-side fridge to replace my ailing unit.

t25torx wrote: Welp I finally found a slide-in range in white, picked it up for $200, sold the old range for $150 so not a bad deal to get what I needed. I also got the rest of the drywall up on the ceiling main area in the kitchen.

Do I spy THREE ranges in this photo?

Mezzanine wrote: Do I spy THREE ranges in this photo?

Yeah. I sold the stand alone range yesterday. The other range was a slide in I bought, it looked white in his garage but when I got it home it was clearly bisque, so that ones going back on CL. The third one is actually white and a slide in. so I think I finally have that sorted.