I have given the master bathroom a fair bit of attention lately. Deconstruction attention…
The fiberglass shower/tub fixture was cut into manageable chunks and hauled out.
Yes… more wide angle photos – please forgive the fish-eye shots.
Yeah… I know… Nice gaping hole under the tub/shower. That was already there – not something I made.
Most of the sheet rock came off the walls.
It’s hard to see in the photos but the shower plumbing came out of the wall at about chin level. My chin!! I’m not all that tall. I am not a fan of showers like that.
The tiny little door and framing was removed and a larger one will be installed somewhere else.
The toilet was removed. Oh boy… gross. Stop looking at these photos if blood, guts, nudity, tree roots, or black holes scare you.
That is the wax ring looking really bad.
The weird looking stuff – those are tree roots! Remember I mentioned how evil these cottonwood tree roots are?!? Ya, those roots had grown under the foundation, up around the plumbing, THRU the wax ring that the toilet sits on, and then down the plumbing.
No wonder it didn’t work very well!!
Not sure if I’ve mentioned it but I rented a roll off trash container. It is sitting in the driveway and is mostly full due to all the house bits that I am tearing out (here, here, and here)
The point of all this tear out/deconstruction is getting as much big stuff in that container. I have it for a month which ends early next week.
The bathrooms were laid out VERY odd and I am fixing that but now I know why they are so odd!
After getting the floor tile removed, I needed to expose the old toilet plumbing so I could remove it and open up the new space where the toilet is going to be located so I could install the new plumbing.
While I had the jack hammer that I previously mentioned, I used it for this bit of work.
After beating up the concrete, I was removing the rumble and dirt underneath and came upon another concrete layer a couple inches down.
Interesting, says I.
I proceeded to beat a hole in it with the sledgehammer. To my surprise, the jack hammer made a hole and dropped down into open space. This is exactly like what happens in the movies when digging for an underground vault filled with treasure!
You can just barely see the hole I punched in the above photo – just to the right of the toilet ring.
Very interesting, says I.
It was obvious to me…. my time had finally come and this was a treasure vault – just waiting for me!!
I quickly ran to my computer to see what big fancy sailboats were for sale!
After finding a boat that I liked, I returned to the treasure vault to recover my booty.
Upon closer inspection, this space even had a sheet metal lining. It was about six inches deep and six-eight inches wide but ran as far in two directions as I could see.
Sadly, my treasure vault was empty.
It took a minute but I then realized that it is the heating ducts. I knew they ran thru the slab but I didn’t expect one to be under my jack hammer!!
This discovery reveals why the toilets are way out in the middle of both bathrooms.
Its going to take a little engineering magic to make it work but I currently believe I can install the toilet where I want it and still have heat – and a drain line for the toilet.
Very disappointed at the lack of any treasure, I retracted my sailboat purchase offer.
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