It is official, there is no longer a toilet downstairs. There is not a shower either but on some level the toilet is more important I think. Luckily, we do now have a toilet upstairs but that means that the wife and I now have to share a bathroom in the morning before going to work. Luckily, I am going to be off most of the month working on the downstairs bathroom remodel so there will not be any jockeying for bathroom space.

Mr Rainman came out on Monday while I went to work. He managed to get all of the main items torn out except the tub. I took a lunch and drove home to help him carry the vanity out of the bathroom as it was too heavy for one person to move. The entire thing is made out of solid wood and plywood. There is a lot of ceiling space

But I am pretty sure we ran some of the ductwork for the downstairs through that empty space. We are going to tear out the entire ceiling and see what we end up with. We may be able to raise the bathroom ceiling! So we have a 85% plan currently but it is fairly fluid. I talked the wife into a pocket door over the weekend. It will go on the hall coat closet side of the bathroom. I will have to alter the tile configuration and do some calculations to see how much tile I have to accommodate the change. We may end up just taking the shower enclosure to the ceiling and going up the wall four feet around the other walls. I am not sure. I am waiting to order the pocket door frame until we get the walls all opened up. I am pretty sure that closet wall is only 2×4 turned sideways thick. The bathroom used to be the front parlor where guests were greeted. That is why you can see a brick chimney on the back of the shower wall. When they decided to do indoor plumbing they just boxed off a room in the middle of the house so the pipes would not freeze and there was easy access.

Our plumber used Pex and copper throughout the house when we replaced all of the plumbing. This is causing some issues as I don’t want to cut it all out, solder on dead heads, tile then cut and solder again. So I am looking at ways to get a nice tile finish with tile saw and tile drill. I will still have to solder in new hot and cold extensions for the shower. We want to move the faucet controls up to waist height. I know how to do it in theory but I am not very good at it. I usually have to do it a couple of times. We are going to tear the room all the way down to the studs so we can get a great view of everything hidden in the walls. We will then see if we need to adjust the level of the walls by furring them out with some extra 2x4s. We are going to sheet the entire bathroom with 5/8 plywood before doing any tile work. The room has shiplap on it now and every time I have had to disturb the shiplap I have replaced it with plywood or more boards. You can hang anything anywhere in the house. Also, the house is over 110 years old, I figured that they know something we don’t and some of those old techniques work.