Bathroom Renovation #2 - Tongue and Groove Planks

I've always hated drywall. I have limited experience working with it but I know it's a messy install and it feels hollow and cheap. I know drywall absorbs water like a sponge and weakens to nothing after water damage. One can easily kick holes in drywall or even do so by swinging a door handle into it. When it punctures or tears you see paper. It costs about $6 for a 4 X 8 sheet. How good can this stuff be? I just don't get it.

After Goggling "solid wood tongue and groove planks", something I had been toying with, all I see are post after post of people complaining about wood planks on their walls. Oh the horror! There are countless more articles on removing wood planks or covering them with drywall then anything praising both their aesthetic qualities and durability. What's up with this? My two favorite rooms in my 1920's house are those with the original pine planks.

So when it came time to determine a wall covering for our bathroom walls where the old tile used to be, I talked Melissa into tongue and groove planks hung horizontally. My original plan was to buy a router bit to cut the tongue and grooves. But my work colleague, Dave, brought me some samples of clean yellow southern pine sold at Lowes and HomeDepot that had the tongues and grooves cut already. Although, it would have been more fun to cut them myself, I went with Dave's easier suggestion.


The damn panels are a joy to hang and are thus far the most satisfying part of this bathroom renovation. They look a little country-ish now, for my tastes, but once painted, I think I'll get the old ship-type look I want.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Shower Curb

I went with stacking three 2X4's for the shower curb. I used lots of nails and liquid nails, including screwing into the studs on either side. This curb is not going anywhere.


Though, building it was the easiest part of this bathroom renovation, deciding exactly where it would go was a challenge. I hope we decided correctly.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Furring Strips?

I think renovation is much more challenging than building from scratch. Everything you do must take existing construction into account. I can deal with things like walls not being square but the thing that I am growing to hate most is determining how to transition to existing wall. In our case it's the whole drywall hung over plaster thing. We've got metal crap sticking out that is attached under wallboard we are trying to keep. Matching new wallboard to the existing stuff is a real pain. Especially determining how to transition to tile.

We decided to build a shallow shelf as a sort of chair rail type thing to cover the transition from old to new wall. In preparation for the new wall (where the tile used to be). I cut a bunch of half inch furring strips from plywood and gave them to Melissa to hang with the nail gun.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Drywall Patching

The idea of ripping out the original plaster ceiling and layer of drywall over it, then replacing it, seemed like a nightmare to me. I hate the idea of drywall over plaster but I figured it would be more trouble than it was worth to replace it. Other than several nail pops and some poorly sanded areas it was in good shape.

We fixed all the nail pop areas, some crumbly sections under the old mirror (that was glued to the drywall), and patched the old electrical box holes. We used the standard technique of screwing a board behind the hung drywall, cutting a small filler patch out of new drywall, and screwing it to the wood. In our case it was a pain because we had plaster behind our drywall. Which meant we had stack drywall scraps and shims to get the patch flush.

The only drywall screws I had long enough to go through the drywall and plaster to meet our wood strip were too long. I know it's not cool to leave pointy screws sticking into the hollow of walls so we improvised. Melissa cut a wine cork in half and I screwed it over the screw points in the wall hollow.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Plaster Demo

Melissa and I have had more conversations about how to tile the shower than anything else. Tile to the ceiling? Tile the ceiling? Tile the non-shower walls? Should the tile be flush with the wall board or overlap it? Should the glass block window have a tile frame or should there be wood on the top portion?

We think we've finally figured it out. The plan is to tile up enough to frame the window top, leaving the original plaster covered with its existing drywall above. The tile will overlap the wallboard at its transitions.

Ripping out plaster covered with drywall is one thing. Trying to do it while saving certain parts of it is another. Melissa used a utility knife and drywall saw at the boundaries. I used a reciprocating saw to cut the plaster boards where they could not be removed in their entirety. We used hammers, pry bars, and tin snips to remove the drywall, plaster, and mesh.

I stitched together 12 photos to show the future shower walls after the last messy chunk of demo. The plaster walls in the rooms on either side of the bathroom are visible. They appear strong and healthy after 87 years.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Electrical

The bathroom's electrical fixtures were black with brass plate covers. They were also installed in the wrong places for our plans. Finally, we wanted to add an additional task light near the toilet. One each of the switches and receptacles were in the right place so I attempted to use the existing metal boxes instead of switching them out with the new blue plastic ones. I got one of those vertically stacked dual single-pole switch jobies that fit in one box. I wanted to consolidate two switches into the existing box. It would have been so nice if it had just worked.

What I discovered was a mess of spaghetti in each box, with several wires coming in and out. As luck would have it I was not able to add another switch and get all the wires shoved back in the tiny metal box. In addition, the stupid switch body kept coming apart whenever I screwed it in. Apparently the old metal box had gotten squished or it wasn't universal enough to accommodate my new switch.

So after a little more cursing, I was forced to rip out the old metal boxes and replace them. We had removed the bottom half of the wall so it was easy to reach up behind the drywall and plaster to make the swap. Here's the new main light and fan next to the entrance. We'll keep the old box in the wall and patch over it.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - The Damn Glass Block Window

What's the best solution to the problem presented by a window in a shower? Replace the window with glass block. At least, that seems to be what everybody does these days. Instead of researching all the companies that make these glass block kits, we just went with Pittsburgh Corning Glass Block, which is what Lowe's carries. Despite the flashy website, I hate this company's kit. For example, instead of making the various spacers one needs, they give you a generic spacer and explain that you need to make the spacers you'll need by cutting their spacers up and filing them down. Trust me, it's a real pain in the ass!

I spent most of a day framing out the new rough opening per Pittsburgh Corning's specs, according to our plan. Melissa spent a good portion of the day making the stupid glass block spacers and buying other Pittsburgh Corning accessories. At the end of the day I finished my rough opening, Melissa primed it, and we added the plastic channels (breaking one in the process). Again, Pittsburgh Corning's steps suck. They wanted us to rip one of the channels in half (lengthwise) with an exacto blade. Yeah, right. I would like to see an exacto blade that could score this thing enough to rip it. Ours certainly didn't work. A final measurement revealed I was 1/2" short on my height. Oh well. I was done for the day. It would have to work.


The next day we painted the channel screw heads white so they wouldn't show through the glass. And now we were ready to mix the mortar. I hated every bit of this project, especially mixing the mortar...with a piece of wood. Buttering up the glass block sucked even worse than I expected. The mortar wouldn't stick to the glass, so we could only pack it on with our hands. The more we worked, the more mortar slid off our glass block and fell all over the place. Complicating matters was the fact that the outside of the window was above a basement stairwell. So one of us had to be on a ladder on the other side of the window trying to catch mortar and shove it back in. After lots of cursing we managed to fit the last of the glass block in place. We spent the rest of the day messing with the mortar and trying to clean the glass. In the end, I'm sure it will be beautiful. But I sure hated doing it!

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Bondo

The obvious way to deal with rotten wood is to replace it. But sometimes that's easier said than done. For example, as I began pulling out rotten studs I discovered what must have been a window leak in the old shower (below bottom left corner of pictured window). There was an obvious trail of rotten wood behind four side-by-side studs I had to replace. But these newly revealed rotten boards were the planks that make up the external wall and the exterior siding planks were nailed in part to said rotten planks. Thus, replacing said rotten planks would involve taking off a chunk of the siding.


Since the planks were in excellent condition except for the leak trail, I decided to repair them instead of replace them. First, I attacked the rot with a hammer claw, removing all the rotten wood. Second, Melissa saturated the areas with Minwax High Performance Wood Hardener (which turns the wood a dark wet color as shown in the above picture). Third, I rebuilt the original wood with Bondo, which is a less expensive version of Minwax High Performance Wood Filler.

Roof Leak Near Chimney

Every time I clear the gutters I make a point to remove the leaves that build up behind our chimney. We have a steep roof valley that directs water and debris to a spot directly behind a granite chimney in front of our house. After lots of rain I've noticed water pooling up behind the chimney but I figured, surely whoever did the roof put adequate flashing below all the tar and calk around the chimney. At least that's what I thought until Melissa pointed out a ceiling leak...that happened to be right below where I always notice water pooling.

So after Googling roof leaks around chimneys and staring at my problem spot for 30 minutes I decided this one was way out of my league.

The home's previous owner left behind a substantial amount of paper work on the home so I was able to find the number of the guy who put the roof on. I figured I would start with him, hoping he would honor his work, and fix the problem. He remembered the house and explained that the previous owner refused to pay the extra money to add the cricket behind the chimney and opted to find his own solution. Anyway, the roofer was cool, gave me a decent price, a five year guarantee on his work, and had the same shingles in stock (so the cricket would match the rest of my roof).

When he was done I climbed up to examine his work and enjoy my new cricket and flashing.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Under the Tile Walls?

I didn't know what we would find under the tiled walls. After what I saw under the tile floor, the was expecting the worst. We found both good and bad. The good was that for the most part the structure was in good shape. We even discovered three vertical 4 x 6" posts, which I thought was cool. The bad was the rotten wood we found below the window where the tub/shower used to be. It would all have to be replaced. To complicate things, the outside wall of the house was nailed to these rotten studs and cripple studs. I knew I would have to remove the original plaster around the window to see the fill extent of the damage. Fun fun fun!

As I continued to demo the window area, Melissa washed down the studs we would keep with a watered down bleach solution in case we had any mildew/mold anywhere.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - More Concrete!

Next, we had to tear out the wall tile that surrounded the entire bathroom. Sounds easy enough, right? Of course not. This tile was attached to 1" thick concrete that was attached to a wire mesh. Once again Branden's hammer drill saved the day. After another day beneath face masks and at least 50 more crate loads of concrete, we finally had most of the nasty stuff out for good. Now I'm just wondering if we should have rented that roll-away dumpster Melissa wanted.