So, more details...
It was pink when we moved in. Doorlink ordered new wallpaper long ago (there's a square of it hanging up on the left). Until this weekend, all I'd done was to put in a new cabinet (you can just see part of it in the extreme left). When we moved in, there was a wall oven on the north wall of the kitchen. Once I got her new double oven cabinet made, I took out that oven, and discovered there was a 32" by 30" floor to ceiling space. So I cut through the bathroom wall to open it up, framed it out, and built an internal cabinet in place. Sliding doors on the bottom, recessed doors and shelves on top. Then other projects took over...
So saturday we bought all the stuff, which is how she gets me going. Sunday I started going after it. As you may have heard, the university is having a visitor this week, and I'm involved with that, and Doorlink is in the choir singing at the national stadium (her mother is thrilled she gets to sing with Placido), so things are really crazy right now, but as the saying goes "there's never a good time". Anyway, the sink came out without too much trouble, but I needed to replace all the 40 year old plumbing fixtures.
The toilet was another story. Wrestled with it a long time, finally gave up on one of the tank bolts and just brute-forced it off. Then the base. One nut came off, the other would just spin. No room to get a hack saw in there... after nearly an hour of uttering bad words, I broke out the angle grinder and fixed that bolt's wagon...
The lighting was bad until those sparks started flying. After that, no problem seeing the work site...
Then the old tile... oh, my goodness. They just poured mortar over the subfloor and then thinset the tile down. I guess cement board didn't exist back then. Doorlink suggested I just take a hammer and break up each individual piece. Yikes! After I got the first piece out, I took a big (BIG) screwdriver and whacked it with a hammer to get it under each piece, and pop it up. It took a while. At one point, I counted hammer blows for each tile... averaged about 20. Nine tiles a square foot, times 20 blows each, times 20 square feet and we're talking 3,600 hammer blows. Should have broken out the air chisel...
It made a complete mess of the surface. And when we unwedged the threshold (using a japanese pull saw to cut off just a little of the doortrim to get that piece of old marble out), well, that part of the subfloor was even worse. I could look through it to the basement. Got that sealed up enough to accept new thinset. Then I broke out the tile saw, and a brand new diamond blade, to cut the new piece of marble Doorlink picked out for the threshold.
That was a nightmare. I'd get a good cut, all the way to the last half inch, then the piece would break. Did that three times, even with Doorlink supporting the long end. Finally got an acceptable trim cut on one side, and went to cut it to length. It happened again... not bad, but not perfect either. Very frustrating. It will be where no one will see it, but I'll know it's there. Rats. But got down the layer of thinset, and got the durn thing fixed in place.
Then, it was time to do something about the surface. Back to the borg for self-leveling compound. I'd never used it before, so had to do some web research. Like most things, they make it sound way more complicated than it is. Ended up mixing the entire bag, and using about 80% of it. By then it was 9:00, and I just put a baby gate across the doorway, and tried to call it a night. Of course, young James tried to storm the battlements, but luckily he was repulsed, and the floor looked pretty good this morning...
This evening, I get to start cutting the new marble tile to fit. Not looking forward to cutting the round section around the floor pipe for the toilet, but what can you do? Gotta find a way. Also, not looking forward to intalling the pedastal sink she picked out, but I've got many problems to solve before I get to that...
Thanks,
Bill