As I’ve been sharing our Hoarder House saga, you may have been wondering where we were living during all the craziness. Well, we were able to stay in our apartment for a few weeks after we closed and had planned to move into the house at that point when our lease was up.
But… every bathroom in the house was completely gutted, except for a single toilet. We had to gut them because they basically contained hazardous waste and you couldn’t enter them without a hazmat suit. (I’m only partially kidding…)
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We were hoping to install a tub/shower into the main bath to make it livable enough for us to move in. But, that single toilet that Jake had installed, it actually needed to be moved because it was situated in the middle of the wall. Who does that? Everyone knows toilets should be in the corner. Plus that left no room for the vanity.
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(These are the only well-lit pictures I have of the bathroom pre-demo… Sorry Jake!!)
So, we had a plumber come out to look into moving the toilet (which is not really a DIY-friendly job). When the plumber arrive he shared with us that he had actually been to our house several months ago to unclog the main drain (thanks for that dude because the main stack was clear, but we still had to unclog every individual drain…)
When he came out to quote the previous owner for the job, he told her a path had to be cleared in order for him to do anything (so the clutter was even WORSE before we saw it!). And he said he took a picture of the basement toilet because in his 25 years of plumbing he has never seen a toilet SO BAD….
*******WARNING, THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART*******
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Yep, that was our toilet. Jake had to remove that all by himself (because I was nowhere near that thing!).
To be fair to the previous homeowner, she said she hadn’t been downstairs in over 5 years, so thankfully she wasn’t actively using the basement bath. So, now you completely understand why the bathrooms were gutted to the studs… Back to the plumber who came to move our toilet:
He advised us that since the plumbing was so old it would probably be best to just replace it all, especially since we were planning to eventually add a bathroom in the loft and reconfigure the other two existing baths. So, that definitely hurt the budget. Plus, he was several weeks out from being able to start. So now we are a week away from our lease ending and we are at least a month from having indoor plumbing.
We were seriously considering getting a gym membership to use the bathroom and shower………..
But God was watching out for us, because that week we got a call from a family at church who was going out of town for two weeks. They offered to let us house sit and watch their dog. YES, PLEASE!!!! And thank you!!!! So we did that for two weeks and at that point the plumbers had only just started their work and we were still weeks out from having a bath/shower. Luckily our friends/realtor let us crash with them for 3 weeks.
I kept telling people I felt homeless, but Jake said that wasn’t fair to say because technically we have a house, it is just not livable. HA!
Although, it was a little crazy living out of a suitcase for so long, I was solaced by the fact that I was getting to design a whole bathroom from scratch!
Here was the existing layout of the main floor bathroom:
First thing was to remove the awkward window to the living room…. Then we planned to take out the claw foot tub and reuse it in the master bathroom upstairs someday. We want to put in a normal tub/shower where the claw foot tub was, add a wall and make a closet in the bottom left corner. Then, the toilet has to be moved to the corner to make room for a bigger vanity. Finally there is a weird sliding door (like a barn door, but more janky and less cool) that has to go for the closet to go in. So we will replace it with a normal door. Here is a fun gif of the plan:
At the same time, Jake told me I had to decide the entire layout for the loft bathroom too since the plumbers were going rough it all in. That was stressful!!! I marinate on designs a lot… it takes time. It took my mom years to pick a carpet color, so it’s in my blood to have indecision on these things. 😉
Despite the pressure and several design iterations, we came up with a layout for the loft with master bedroom and bath. I’ll have to share that plan with you in more detail in another post, because it’s pretty exciting! And because we are months, if not a year, out from working on this bathroom.
Next post I’ll be sharing my design inspiration for the main bathroom and the progress we have made so far!!
MAIN BATHROOM POSTS
Hoarder House Bathroom Situation
Main Bath Design
Tile Trend – Black Hexagon Tile Floors
Main Bathroom Reveal
Main Bathroom Sources
Main Bathroom Budget