Post #3297: DIY discomfort

(If you are reading this via email – note that there are photos on the blog that show the before/after of our project).

Since moving into our house seven years ago, re-doing the downstairs bathroom has been on the agenda. I don’t think it’s been touched since the house was built in 1998, and no matter how hard I scrubbed it never looked clean. The floor was dinge-grey, the bathtub surround yellowed, and the vanity counter marked with some stain I couldn’t remove.

In the spring we chose and ordered new bathroom components (except the toilet which is relatively new and in good working order) and then waited for a window with no visitors to get going on our little project. We started immediately following a community emergency planning meeting at our house on the 20th, which makes it eight days since we started tearing everything out.

Neither Brian or I have any DIY-renovating experience at all, which means that we have both watched a *ton* of online tutorials in the last week. I am very thankful for the home contractors of YouTube for all the demonstrations and advice thus far! From them I have learned so many things such as how to:

• remove a tub drain and remove all other bath/shower hardware
• demo a bathroom piece by piece (which included taking a sawzall to the bathtub surround – terrifying but effective)
• cap off water lines
• test electrical lines and circuits on a malfunctioning hot water heater
• lay sheet linoleum (Brian did the measure and cut)
• patch seam lines in lino with “hoofer doofer”
• remove iron bacteria from toilet tanks

Brian has also learned how to remove and re-install a toilet, and we both learned some new things about how our house is wired.

Basically, we’ve both been operating in a place of total discomfort since we started this project, and yet we have gotten so far in just a few days! We have gained more skills to move onto other renovation projects as well as home repair issues. The upstairs tub needs a new drain, the shower in my studio needs replacing – we are now comfortable taking on both of these jobs in addition to reno-ing the laundry room.

The next stage of the bathroom involves a plumber, as we are not confident about working with the jogged copper pipe (which we hope to replace with pex), not to mention the replacement of a hot water heater with no shut off valves and that was soldered at all the joins. After that we’ll re-commence the discomfort as we cut and fit drywall around the new shower installation, and get baseboards back in place. If our plumber is able to get to us this week (he is coming to scope it out today), we could be finished this project by Labour Day. That includes an insert for our linen closet that my dad volunteered to make for me and is bringing up on the weekend.

I am attempting to take this diy-discomfort energy into the fall as I re-engage with the book I started writing in the spring of 2022. It’s a completely different kind of work but the same lessons apply: 1) discomfort leads to growth 2) doing a little bit every day gets the job finished, and 3) if the worst thing you do is cause a power surge that fries your hot water tank element – it’s not the end of the world. Okay, maybe the last lesson isn’t totally applicable, though it does serve to remind me that writing a book is a lot safer than taking a sawzall to anything.

I’ll post here with the finished bathroom pics, and also about the book progress as it unfolds.