If your residence is old enough for a bathroom restoration, you may wish to proceed and totally intestine it. I started my shower room remodel last month with a full demolition. If I hadn't, a number of problems would have been not available for fixing ... or even undiscovered. Right here's just what I found when I opened up the walls as well as ceiling of my 1981 condominium right here in the Quad Cities.
Take care of plumbing surprises
Here's another thing I located. I'm not a pipes specialist, however I see an issue here. Envision if that section of common drainpipe line for our back-to-back sinks obtained clogged. Currently visualize running a snake in there from one sink. Do you believe it would make the turn? Possibly not. We altered it out and also balance out the two.
Repair termite damages
When I opened up the outside wall, I located termite damage in 2 places: the king stud, jack stud, and also cripple on the bath tub side of the window as well as the jack stud on the other side of the window. The bright side is that the damage was done long ago. As long as I have actually lived here, the owners' organization has stayed on top of termite therapy and monitoring, but I recognize there was a duration when they didn't. For this reason the damage I located.
Change rotted subflooring
In addition to the termite-damaged wall, I also located rotten subflooring near the bathtub. This was mainly from getting too wet, as well as I suspected it because ceramic tiles had actually started turning up in that location.
Make up for no or little insulation
I recognized we had insulation in our walls. I assumed it was R-11 fiberglass batts because our upstairs next-door neighbor's icemaker had a negative leak a couple of years earlier, taking out fifty percent of our laundry room ceiling and also part of the wall. The common wall had R-11 batts. I figured the rest of the walls did, as well. I understood they had insulation due to the fact that I've checked behind button and receptacle plates.
I obtained a little surprise when I took the drywall off of that exterior bathroom wall and also saw this:
This is in fact an advantage, in a way, since it indicates I'll obtain even more improvement than I believed I was getting.
Seal up the air leakages
Yes, our 1981 apartment is leaky. I understood about the large tub holes and various other pipes infiltrations due to the fact that I have actually seen them from the cellar. I didn't know that the walls were sheathed with asphalt-impregnated fiber board (Celotex) that provided great deals of air leakage pathways. Again, searching the bright side, that implies I'll be able to make even more enhancement than I 'd assumed.
I cannot wait to do a blower door test when it's all done. Unfortunately, I will not be able to separate out the renovation due only to my bathroom job. The owners' association simply had the whole flooring sealed with spray foam insulation. I'm presuming our total air leak will be around half of exactly what it was.
Set up an exhaust fan and repair ductwork
Did I mention our condominium was built in the 80's? The master bath has a window, so normally, it didn't need an exhaust fan, right? Wrong. I have actually overcome a year of information on temperature and family member moisture because washroom without an exhaust fan. Now I'm putting one in and will collect much more data. Stay tuned for the results.
Yet even if your bathroom already has a follower, I would certainly bet it does not move sufficient air. The normal bath follower stirs half its rated air flow. If your bathroom follower isn't really obtainable from the attic room, opening up the ceiling is the only way to obtain at the duct and also repair it. What you see because picture listed below prevails for bath fan air ducts: sagging flex air duct that makes a lot of turns. (That's not my brand-new fan, incidentally.).
Fix other potentially unknown repair needs.
A number of years ago we needed to do some plumbing benefit the tub in the hall shower room. When the plumbings had the wall opened, I asked them to put shutoffs know the hot and cold water lines to make sure that if anybody needed to work on that plumbing in the future, they wouldn't need to switch off the water to the whole building.
So they put in the valves. When I opened up the wall, I saw them as well more info as took this picture:.
I would certainly utilize that shower a couple of times throughout the years and also always asked yourself why the pressure was so low. Currently I understand. The plumbing professionals installed the shutoffs yet then didn't open them completely. Those red takes care of ought to be straight in accordance with the pipelines. Nice!
I likewise discovered that our ceiling had 2 layers of drywall. We have a smooth ceiling throughout our condo, yet the initial ceiling was stippled. Thankfully, it wasn't a popcorn ceiling, which can have asbestos.
And also I uncovered the initial, hideous wallpaper.
If you're renovating a shower room, there a lot of good needs to copulate as well as digestive tract it totally. That's what I'm doing. We're almost all set to begin closing it back in, so remain tuned for even more stories from the bathroom.