Yep, I think we can safely say that this project has been upgraded from "stripping paint and repainting" to "bathroom remodeling". Sigh. Well, we knew we wanted to do it eventually. I guess eventually is now. Good thing we've been socking money away in our savings accounts this year.
I think we were doomed to remodel by the awful "home improvement" choices of previous owners of this house. Their shoddy work, poor decisions, and half-assed plans have left us with few options other than to gut the room entirely, right down the wall studs, and start over from scratch. Ultimately, this will mean a much better result, but of course it's a lot more work and the room will be out of commission for much longer. Oh, and it's much more costly, of course.
The good thing is that if we really do rip out the plaster walls and lay new sheetrock, we will also be able to do some of the other projects that will really improve the room--like put in a moisture vent, insulate the outside wall, replumb the shower, and make the medicine cabinet a built-in rather than just hang it on the wall.
But we've little choice now. I think we passed the point of no return last night when we discovered the old tile hiding behind the top layer of newer tile. We were definitely not expecting that, and it seriously derailed our plan of scraping down to the plaster and lathe wall and repainting. If it had just been the newer layer of plastic tile we could have done it--the stripper does take that putty off--but two layers of tile? and who know what behind the older one? I don't think we have any option other than ripping the wall out. We were doomed from the beginning, we just didn't know it until we started scraping off the outer layers. Working in this old house is sort of like archeology--peeling back layers of house history to discover hidden mysteries.
Lady Lily, Chief Archeologist in Charge of Bathrooms
No comments:
Post a Comment