Why You Should Totally Demo Your Bathroom When You Remodel



If your home is old sufficient for a bathroom remodelling, you might intend to go ahead as well as entirely intestine it. I started my restroom remodel last month with a total demolition. If I had not, a variety of problems would have been not available for repair service ... or perhaps obscure. Below's what I found when I opened up the walls as well as ceiling of my 1981 condominium right here in the Quad Cities.

Deal with pipes shocks
Below's one more thing I found. I'm not a plumbing professional, however I see an issue right here. Visualize if that area of usual drainpipe line for our back-to-back sinks obtained blocked. Currently think of running a snake in there from one sink. Do you believe it would make the turn? Probably not. We changed it out and offset both.

Repair termite damages
When I opened up the exterior wall, I located termite damages in 2 locations: the king stud, jack stud, and cripple on the bath tub side of the home window as well as the jack stud on the other side of the home window. The bright side is that the damage was done long ago. As long as I've lived below, the proprietors' association has kept up with termite therapy as well as monitoring, yet I comprehend there was a period when they really did not. For this reason the damage I located.

Change rotted subflooring
Along with the termite-damaged wall, I also located rotten subflooring near the bathtub. This was primarily from getting also wet, and also I presumed it because floor tiles had begun popping up because area.

Offset no or little insulation
I understood we had insulation in our walls. I assumed it was R-11 fiberglass batts since our upstairs next-door neighbor's icemaker had a bad leak a couple of years ago, securing fifty percent of our utility room ceiling as well as part of the wall surface. The usual wall surface had R-11 batts. I figured the rest of the wall surfaces did, too. I understood they had insulation due to the fact that I've inspected behind button and receptacle plates.
I got a little shock when I took the drywall off of that exterior shower room wall and saw this:

This is really a good idea, in a way, since it suggests I'll get more enhancement compared to I assumed I was getting.

Seal the air leaks
Yes, our 1981 condominium is leaking. I found out about the big bathtub holes as well as various other pipes infiltrations due to the fact that I have actually seen them from the basement. I didn't know that the walls were sheathed with asphalt-impregnated fiberboard (Celotex) that offered lots of air leakage pathways. Once again, viewing the silver lining, that indicates I'll have the ability to make even more enhancement compared to I 'd believed.

I cannot wait to do a blower door test when it's all done. Sadly, I won't be able to separate out the improvement due only to my washroom job. The proprietors' organization just had the whole flooring secured with spray foam insulation. I'm presuming our overall air leakage will be around half of what it was.

Mount an exhaust follower as well as fix ductwork
Did I mention our apartment was constructed in the 80's? The master bathroom has a window, so normally, it really did not need an exhaust fan, right? Incorrect. I've got over a year of information on temperature level and relative moisture in that bathroom without an exhaust follower. Now I'm putting one in and also will collect extra data. Stay tuned for the outcomes.

But even if your washroom currently has a fan, I would certainly wager it does not move sufficient air. The normal bath follower moves about half its ranked air flow. If your bathroom fan isn't really available from the attic room, opening up the ceiling is the only means to get at the duct as well as fix it. What you see because photo listed below is common for bathroom fan air ducts: sagging flex duct that makes way too many turns. (That's not my new follower, by the way.).

Fix other potentially unknown repair needs.
A number of years ago we needed to do some plumbing help the bathtub in the hall restroom. When the plumbings had the wall surface opened up, I asked to place shutoffs in on the hot and cold water lines to make sure that if anybody needed to work with that plumbing in the future, they wouldn't need to switch off the water to the whole building.
So they place in the shutoffs. When I opened up the wall, I saw them as well as took this image:.



I 'd use that shower a few times over the years and constantly asked yourself why the stress was so low. Now I understand. The plumbers installed the shutoffs however then didn't open them fully. Those red takes care of ought to be straight in accordance with the pipes. Great!

I additionally found that our ceiling had 2 layers of drywall. We have a smooth ceiling throughout our condominium, but the original ceiling was stippled. Fortunately, it wasn't a snacks ceiling, which might have asbestos.

And also I uncovered the initial, gruesome wallpaper.

If you're remodeling a bathroom, there a lot of excellent needs to go all the way and digestive tract it totally. That's exactly what I'm doing. We're more info practically ready to begin closing it back in, so stay tuned for more stories from the restroom.

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