I was out of town with J last weekend, so there was no work on the bathroom. This weekend, though, I decided to go ahead and pull the drywall from one of the walls I had left remaining. 

Now, the reason I had left it was because when I began attempting to demo it a couple of weeks ago, I discovered there was some kind of board behind the drywall.

If you look closely at my hammer hole (in a hollow area — I didn’t just start hammering at whatever), you can see what I’m talking about. So, I had decided to just patch it up and leave it as is. 

The problem, however, was that part of this wall was crooked near where the toilet is. After a while, it just bothered me enough that I decided to demo the wall anyway. And what, exactly, was the board behind the drywall? 

Apparently, the builders of the remodel decided to use paneling as some sort of substrate for the drywall. affixed by some nails, some screws, and some drywall mud as glue. So, I promptly pulled it off the wall. 

And behind door number 3?

So, remember when I mentioned that this used to be a bedroom that was remodeled into a master bath when the addition was put on (the new master bedroom lies behind the door you see there)? Well, they left part of the window. Not the spot where the window was. The window. They literally cut part of the window for the door opening and left the intact glass in the wall. 

There are these other planks affixed to the wall, which was originally an exterior wall, so plaster over cinder block or masonry block or something. 

I’ll leave the planks to affix new drywall to. If you notice where my square is sitting, I wanted to check if the post there was level or if the partial plaster wall poking out at the bottom was level. Turns out, the post is. The wall was crooked here because they didn’t cut the plaster level to the post. Then again, they spelled toilet as “tolit.” 

The other thing I took care of yesterday was to remove the rotted subfloor plank areas and replace with new boards.

Nailing was apparently difficult. That center plank you see. There were SIX nails at that joist. Three were haphazardly nailed into basically one space. In the end, I defeated the boards.

I’ll be adding a support layer of OSB over this for the shower and for the tub. The rest of the floor will get some cement boards for the tiling. 

One note about the 1×8 boards. They’re really 7.25″…. and the ones in the house are closer to 7.5. Interesting about standard sizing. Also, I needed a total of about 8 feet of board. Lowe’s sells 8-ft sections for $15.99. But I was going to cut them into smaller portions anyway, and noticed that 4-ft sections were $5.74. A $4.50 savings if you don’t need the long section. (The shorter segments also fit into my car a bit better.)

I still have some excess plaster around the edges of the wall you see above, which I’ll do today or this week. 

Next steps:

• Install exhaust duct. J’s scared of me venting to the roof, but the internet says it’s not that difficult. My roof vent kit came yesterday, and I’d rather not return it. Might be easier to vent from the gable anyway (even if it wouldn’t look as clean), since there are a bunch of solar panels on the roof taking up a lot of space. 
• Measure out the layout for the tub surround and tub. This is so I can ensure the drain is appropriately placed. 

These are the last steps before I can call to set up my first inspection for rough plumbing and rough mechanical.

In the meantime, stay salty, my ladies!