My outdoor projects have to be put on hold for now due to the weather. I spent a couple of hours yesterday trying to work on the exterior bedroom door, but it had rained earlier in the day and the mud made the job much more difficult, time-consuming, and dangerous. Safety Tip: Never climb an aluminum ladder with muddy shoes. So, with my outdoor projects on hold until the weather improves and the ground dries out, I decided to get back to the bathroom hallway to storage room project and see how much progress I can make on the bathroom demolition.
If you’re new here, here’s a quick summary to get you up to speed. This is the bathroom I’m working on. It used to be our master guest bathroom, but then I did some remodeling and turned our three-bedroom house into a one-bedroom house with the three original bedrooms included in one large master bedroom. That left this original guest bathroom inside our bedroom, which has a very awkward layout, to say the least. So I’m turning this bathroom into a much needed storage room.
The left wall that had the vanity and toilet in the bathroom will have cabinets that look like this…
And the opposite wall that now has the tub will have cabinets that look like this…
I had already done some demolition in this room a few months ago, but after finishing remodeling the rest of our bedroom, I decided I wasn’t (mentally) ready to jump right into another big interior remodeling project. So I closed the doors and went outside for a couple of months to work on some exterior projects. But for the next few weeks, it looks like I’ll be juggling this warehouse project and outdoor projects while finishing up the last two outdoor projects I want to finish when the weather allows. Once I’m done, I’ll be 100% focused on this storage room.
Anyway, I’ve been a little surprised to find that ripping out this bathroom, which was the second room remodel I tackled after buying this house, hasn’t been difficult for me at all. I expected to feel some kind of sadness tearing out all my hard work, but it’s been a decade since I did this bathroom, so I feel nothing but excitement for the future storage room.
The main thing I did yesterday was rip out these cabinets/shelves that were just inside the bathroom door on the right.
All that no longer exists.
I was grateful to be able to get all of that out with minimal damage to the drywall. I’m really trying my best to do this demolition without having to start from scratch on all the drywall.
But that brings me to the first of two big (and expensive) lessons I’ve learned during my years of remodeling rooms. Number one…
No construction adhesive needed on trim!
In my early years of DIY and room remodeling, I used construction adhesive very liberally. Every time I added a piece of molding to the wall, I used construction adhesive before nailing the molding to the wall. I used it in each piece.
I stopped doing this a few years ago when I realized it’s simply not necessary. When you install trim, you typically follow the installation with caulking around the trim, priming, and painting the trim. Nails, caulk, primer, and paint are enough to keep the molding in place. Construction adhesive is almost always overkill. But I used to use it on everything.
Not only is it an unnecessary added cost to the project, but if you decide to remove the molding, that construction adhesive is nothing but a nightmare and will destroy the drywall when you try to remove the molding from the wall.
Without the construction adhesive, all of this wainscoting could have been removed from the walls with minimal damage to the walls. I would have simply had to score the caulk siding with a knife, remove the wall molding, do some sanding, and then the walls could have been painted (or textured and painted if wall texture is your thing). But because of that construction adhesive, I’m left with a much bigger job.
The same goes for mirror putty. I’m not saying that mirror putty isn’t necessary in some situations. It was definitely necessary on this mirror with this design that didn’t allow for mirror clips to be screwed to the wall. But just a tablespoon of mirror putty in each corner is enough. I can almost guarantee you that I put mirror caulk all over the back of this mirror, which will make removing it a nightmare and will probably leave me with the drywall completely destroyed once I remove it.
I’ve learned a lot in my years of DIY and one of my biggest lessons is that this kind of hype will always backfire on you. It is simply not necessary and adds additional expense to the project.
And lesson number two…
Always install the flooring first (and buy more to have on hand)
I know this isn’t always possible, but I wish I had installed the floor first, completely under the tub, and then installed the tub on top of the floor.
When you don’t install the flooring first and run it around the entire room, wall to wall, but rather place it around fixed elements in the room (like vanities, tubs, kitchen cabinets, etc.), it will always cause problems if you decide to remodel and rearrange a room.
I will be left with this huge area that has no floor, so now I have to decide what to do with this floor. Since I can’t find a tile that matches this decade-old tile, should I top it off with a tile that is “close enough”? Should I redo the entire floor? I could have saved myself a huge headache and extra cost if I hadn’t just laid the tile first, wall to wall, before installing the tub and other fixtures. But I also learned that it’s always a good idea to buy a couple extra boxes of tiles to have on hand for this very reason.
But unfortunately, I have no tiles left under the tub and no extra boxes of tiles. So now I have to decide what I’m going to do with this floor. I could have saved myself time and money if I had spent a little extra money back then, tiled the entire floor, and bought a couple extra boxes of tile to have on hand. But that’s the DIY life, right? We live and learn from our mistakes.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 upper that my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and can’t do physical work, so I do most of the house work myself. You can learn more about me here.
