DIY: Small-Time Bath Remodel

NorthernDaddy would like to welcome everyone to today's posting of This (Not So) Old House. In this episode, we will be walking our readers through a quick "freshening up" of a bathroom and, in the process, discovering that Norm Abram has nothing on NorthernDaddy.

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Recently, NorthernMommy had to travel to Rhode Island with her cross-country team - leaving NorthernDaddy and Toddler with nothing to do (yeah, right!) for almost a whole day. NorthernDaddy had the bright idea to spruce up the bathroom for Mommy. As one can see from the photo below, NorthernMommy has been living with a pair of semi-patched holes in her wall for a few years. When the Northerns moved into their house, Daddy removed two stupid soap dishes from the wall. (They were 'stupid' because of where they were located, and how they didn't match the rest of the bathroom fixtures.) It took about a year for NorthernDaddy to cover the holes with spackle - and even then, Mommy had to live with unsanded spackle patches on her wall.

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Another visual disaster in the bathroom was the lighting. In the second photo, you can see what fine examples of light fixtures that the Northerns were dealing with. Cheap, electro-plated tin things that left the bulbs exposed and funky-looking. (Can you tell we weren't fans of them?)

NorthernDaddy's goal was to paint the wall and do something about the lights - and to do it without telling NorthernMommy beforehand. A kind of a surprise to brighten her day when she returned home.

 

The list of tasks:

               - stop by the hardware store and buy supplies.

               - replace the two horrific light fixtures with one modern-looking one

               - sand the drywall patches

               - tape off the edges of the wall to make painting easier

                - paint (two coats)

Simple, right? Everyone's seen Norm, Tom, and the crew finish a job like this in a nice, short twenty minute episode of This Old House (yup-20 minutes! wink, wink). NorthernDaddy has approximately twenty-four hours to finish. Take out four hours for errands (hardware store, trip to the bookstore to play with the trains, grocery store), another two for dinner and bath, three for a toddler friend's birthday, etc. Gotta sleep some, too. That leaves about nine hours to get things done. Did you forget to look at the paint can and read "Allow three hours between coats..."? Better get cranking.

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Here's where we find that Norm Abrams is a soft, lazy, can't-get-it-done hack with a cushy carpenter's job. Why does NorthernDaddy say that? Because Norm doesn't work with a three-year-old. Trying to do any home improvement or repair project with a toddler at your side is like trying to pan for gold at the bottom of Niagara Falls. Or carving a life-size statue of Garth Brooks with a toothpick. Or herding cats. It's pretty much a losing battle with the potential for sudden disaster at any second. The questions never stop:

"What are you doing?"

"What is that thing?"

"Can I use the sander?"

"Why are you cutting holes in the wall?"

"Can you turn the lights back on?"

"Why not? It's dark in here."

"Who did what when they wired the lights?"

"It's okay - with the lights out, Mommy won't see the huge hole in the wall."

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Why not just work on the bathroom after Toddler has dozed off? Because Daddy's on a tight schedule and Toddler won't sleep when an orbital sander is running or Daddy is cutting holes in the wall next to his bedroom. The excitement eventually wore off, and Toddler went to sleep; but Daddy had a big job cut out for himself. The light took a long time to mount and run wires to (who would have thought that adding fourteen inches to a wire drop would take an hour and require major drywall patching? Damn 1950s house framers....), but it got done. The painting got done, too - NorthernDaddy hates painting.

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To cut through the rest of the boring details and bring you the results, we'll skip all the stuff about spilled paint and mean electric wires and rabid skunks living in the wall cavities. (Okay, maybe the skunk thing was just made up....) The paint looks good - a nice white to complement the lavender walls that didn't need painting. No big spackle patches. One very bright light.

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The light might have been a mistake. The old fixtures each held a sixty watt bulb. Together, that gives off 120 watts of light. The new light bar boasts six holes with a sixty watt bulb in each. That's um....360 watts of light - three times as much as before. Might be overkill. When the light is switched on in the bathroom, everybody in the house knows it. The people across the street notice. It's possible that our bathroom light is visible from space. It is that bright. With that many lumens bouncing around in such a small space, looking in the mirror is shocking. When did NorthernDaddy get so old? Where did those wrinkles come from? Look at all of those gray hairs! NorthernMommy turned the light on for the first time (with no warning) and was blinded for hours. She has suggested bringing home some lower wattage bulbs, but Daddy is resisting: extra light fights the winter blues!

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Below is the only suitable photo that could be taken of the new light and paint. That vertical line under the mirror is just shadow/reflections from the flash - the paint job is perfect! Notice that the goal of getting rid of the two drywall patches has been completed!



(Please note that NorthernDaddy has no ill will toward Norm Abram or any of the This Old House crew. He has nothing but respect for them, and only wrote about them for humorous effect. NorthernDaddy would, however, like to see any one of them manage to work with a toddler!?)