Why You Should Totally Demo Your Bathroom When You Remodel



If your home is old sufficient for a shower room renovation, you may wish to proceed and entirely intestine it. I began my washroom remodel last month with a full demolition. If I hadn't, a variety of troubles would certainly have been unavailable for repair service ... or perhaps undiscovered. Right here's exactly what I discovered when I opened the wall surfaces and also ceiling of my 1981 apartment below in the Quad Cities.

Fix pipes shocks
Below's one more thing I found. I'm not a pipes professional, yet I see an issue right here. Imagine if that area of usual drain line for our back-to-back sinks got clogged. Currently picture running a snake in there from one sink. Do you think it would certainly make the turn? Probably not. We transformed it out as well as balance out both.

Repair termite damage
When I opened up the exterior wall, I located termite damages in two areas: the king stud, jack stud, and maim on the tub side of the window and also the jack stud on the other side of the home window. The bright side is that the damages was done long ago. As long as I've lived below, the owners' organization has stayed up to date with termite treatment as well as monitoring, however I understand there was a period when they really did not. Thus the damages I discovered.

Change rotted subflooring
Along with the termite-damaged wall, I likewise discovered rotten subflooring near the bath tub. This was mostly from getting also wet, and also I suspected it due to the fact that floor tiles had started popping up in that area.

Make up for no or little insulation
I understood we had insulation in our wall surfaces. I assumed it was R-11 fiberglass batts due to the fact that our upstairs next-door neighbor's icemaker had a bad leak a few years back, securing fifty percent of our utility room ceiling and also part of the wall surface. The common wall had R-11 batts. I figured the remainder of the walls did, as well. I understood they had insulation because I have actually checked behind switch as well as receptacle plates.
I obtained a little surprise when I took the drywall off of that exterior washroom wall and saw this:

This is really a good thing, in a manner, since it means I'll get more enhancement than I assumed I was going to get.

Seal the air leaks
Yes, our 1981 condominium is leaking. I knew about the big bathtub openings and also various other pipes infiltrations since I've seen them from the basement. I didn't recognize that the wall surfaces were covered with asphalt-impregnated fiberboard (Celotex) that offered lots of air leak pathways. Again, looking on the silver lining, that means I'll have the ability to make even more improvement than I would certainly believed.

I can't wait to do a blower door examination when it's all done. Regrettably, I won't have the ability to separate out the improvement due just to my shower room job. The owners' organization just had the entire floor sealed with spray foam insulation. I'm presuming our overall air leak will be around half of exactly what it was.

Mount an exhaust fan as well as fix ductwork
Did I mention our apartment was built in the 80's? The master bath has a home window, so normally, it really did not need an exhaust fan, right? Wrong. I've overcome a year of information on temperature level as well as relative moisture because bathroom without an exhaust fan. Now I'm placing one in and will collect much more data. Remain tuned for the results.

But even if your restroom already has a fan, I would certainly bet it does not move enough air. The common bath follower stirs half its rated air flow. If your bathroom follower isn't easily accessible from the attic, opening up the ceiling is the only means to obtain at the duct and repair it. Exactly what you see in that image below is common for bathroom fan air ducts: sagging flex air duct that makes a lot of turns. (That's not my new follower, by the way.).

Address other potentially unknown repair needs.
Several years ago we had to do some pipes help the bathtub in the hall restroom. When the plumbing professionals had the wall opened, I asked them to put shutoffs know the hot and cold water lines to make sure that if any individual needed to deal with that pipes in the future, they would not need to shut off the water to the entire structure.
So they place in the shutoffs. When I opened up the wall, I saw them as well as took this picture:.



I would certainly utilize that shower a few times for many years and also always asked yourself why the pressure was so reduced. Now I understand. The plumbing professionals set up the valves however after that didn't check here open them totally. Those red deals with should be straight in accordance with the pipes. Great!

I also found that our ceiling had 2 layers of drywall. We have a smooth ceiling throughout our apartment, but the initial ceiling was stippled. Fortunately, it wasn't a popcorn ceiling, which might contain asbestos.

As well as I uncovered the initial, hideous wallpaper.

If you're renovating a washroom, there a lot of good reasons to go all the way as well as digestive tract it entirely. That's just what I'm doing. We're almost ready to start shutting it back in, so remain tuned for even more tales from the shower room.

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