Complete bathroom remodel

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So now I'm thinking I'm going to just knock out the rest of the concrete, build up the floor with plywood and Shluter Ditra underlayment
First of all, great pics. Too many post here without pics and leaves everyone guessing.

With the amount of gutting/retrofit you are doing, you might as well go the whole nine yards and Schluter Kerdi Board the walls around the tub too, instead of tiling over the existing drywall that we can see from the demolition started on it.

Ditra might be overkill for such a small bathroom, unless you want to explore the Ditra Heat. Layer enough plywood and thinset on that small floor with quality tiles, I can't see that floor ever cracking during your lifetime.

Don't be so surprised at the whole tiling around the furniture fastened to the subfloor, that's common with new construction to save time and money. It was done 30 years ago, I still see it being done today.
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Jadnashua

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What you have is a mudded floor that the tile is attached to. That is a great way to make a perfectly level substrate for tiling. It is made with a very lean mix of cement and sand in at least a 4:1 ratio of sand:cement, just mixed wet enough to hold together if you squeeze a handful together without dripping excess water. You pack it like wet beach sand.

Are you planning to tear all of it out to the subfloor, or just patch what's there? You will not be able to make the patch fully bonded to the existing mudbed, or, tie it together with the mesh. That joint will be subject to potentially cracking down the road. While Ditra is a very good product, it is not designed to be a crack isolation membrane, and probably wouldn't prevent a crack there, if it occurred, from projecting up through the tile. Check out www.johnbridge.com for help with tiling things.
 

Lordoftheflies

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I'm going to knock out the rest of the mudbed down to the subfloor yes. I can see that it will not be stable if I try to fill in the area under the old cabinet especially since there were cracks in the existing mudbed due to my brother's....impatience..... :)

I was planning on the kerdi board around the bathtub too since I won't be able to take off the bath wall tiles without knocking it all to hell anyways.

Also there is literally almost no insulation so it makes sense to insulate the outside walls and the existing exhaust fan is not doing a good enough job so that needs to be replaced as well.

Will install a led hi hat above the shower too since the curtain is making it a bit dark in the tu while drawn.

And yeah, I like pics too. Heh heh.
 

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I'm not crazy about the shower valve either. I had replaced the stems a few years ago and it doesn't leak....but maybe this is the right time to replace that as well.

My father's shower stall had a leak and it turned out to be the angle brass nipple for the head that had rotted completely through. Probably smart to at least replace that even if I don't replace the shower/bathtub valves.

My bathtub is old too.
 

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Ok now I'm having fun. Busted up the concrete floor today and guess what I found?

1. Water damage under concrete near toilet.
2. Water damage near bathtub on the drain side.
3. Black mold near toilet on subfloor.
4. Bathtub drain does not have the cross beams in it. I ordered a drain extractor. Should be here tomorrow.
5. 1/8" plywood ontop of subfloor near the toilet. Wtf.
6. Mouse droppings.

Removed the wire mesh, removed the black tar paper, and pulled up all the exposed nails. Some of the pieces of the subfloor need to be replaced.

Good news is I can see the water lines and the 1.5" copper drain line just inside the door so if I want to go with a larger tub I can just pick up the subfloor and reroute.

I have a question about the toilet flange and bend. It is not copper and it does not appear to be lead caulked on but maybe I'm just blind. It was sitting about 1/2" above the finish floor. I took some side pictures of it. The inside opening of the flange is only 3". I tried to scratch it with a nail and saw no signs of copper.

My question is - how do I remove this flange so that I can fit a proper flange and make it flush to the finish floor? Should I put a flame to the inside of the flange and look for some lead caulk?

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I just tapped the flange on the inside ring where it looks like it might be a lead caulk but it's definitely part of the flange. I can hear the entire flange ring. You can see from the side view that it is tapered...There is no room for lead caulk as far as I can tell.
 

Jadnashua

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It looks like it's a brass or bronze flange that is soldered onto the copper pipe. It will take a pretty big torch to remove it, or, what might be easier IF you can afford the height, maybe cut the elbow off, use a properly sized no-hub connector, and add a new elbow and attach a new flange to the pipe. Most of the plastic ones will be longer, but maybe a street elbow going directly into the new flange might work...you'd have to measure carefully.

You can remove the existing one and potentially reuse it, but be careful with a torch...you don't want to burn the house down!
 

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Another problem to be added to the long list of problems.....is that they notched the joists for the water supply lines and the 1.5" drain to the tub instead of drilling. Based on what I can tell it looks like there was some renovation work last done in 1960 based on some newspaper stuffed in the walls behind some plaster of Paris that was used to secure the toilet paper holder.

I will post some pics later. Tub is almost all gone (had to wait for toilet extractor to arrive), walls stripped down to studs as well as the ceiling.
 

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Your warning about the torch reminds me of the plumber in a NJ apartment complex that burned the whole thing down for some minor work. He soldered in a wall, didn't use a shield, and the whole damn place went up in flames.
 

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Hope that there is no asbestos in that old building material.

I did my share of demolition work during remodeling projects 30 years ago and we never gave any thought to the stuff.
 
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Ok now I'm having fun. Busted up the concrete floor today and guess what I found?

1. Water damage under concrete near toilet.
Seriously? Concrete on top of a wooden subfloor? I thought it was all on a slab! Ditra Heat this whole sucker all the way.
My question is - how do I remove this flange so that I can fit a proper flange and make it flush to the finish floor? Should I put a flame to the inside of the flange and look for some lead caulk?
Nothing you do to that will "loosen it".

I mean, you could use an oxygen torch on that and melt things up, but you have to actually get your hands on one of those first. The time you waste getting that, you could have replaced all exposed with plastic. A grinder or Sawzall is your friend here.

You have a small bath, and would not cost that much in materials to Schluter it all up and make it last another 75 years. My home bath used to be linoleum and drywall that was zero damage after 60 years, go figure.

Again, really GREAT pics. This thread is a great example at what every member here should do. Most of the time I do not bother reading pages of explanations from folks, simply because they couldn't even be bothered with a simple low-res pic from their phone.
 

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Hope that there is no asbestos in that old building material.

I did my share of demolition work during remodeling projects 30 years ago and we never gave any thought to the stuff.

I hope so too. I don't think there is any though based on the images I found of it.

Seriously? Concrete on top of a wooden subfloor? I thought it was all on a slab! Ditra Heat this whole sucker all the way.

Nothing you do to that will "loosen it".

I mean, you could use an oxygen torch on that and melt things up, but you have to actually get your hands on one of those first. The time you waste getting that, you could have replaced all exposed with plastic. A grinder or Sawzall is your friend here.

You have a small bath, and would not cost that much in materials to Schluter it all up and make it last another 75 years. My home bath used to be linoleum and drywall that was zero damage after 60 years, go figure.

Again, really GREAT pics. This thread is a great example at what every member here should do. Most of the time I do not bother reading pages of explanations from folks, simply because they couldn't even be bothered with a simple low-res pic from their phone.

I will cut it it and transition to PVC and measure carefully. I kind of want to move it over from the wall so I can have it rotated 90 degrees. I'd also get rid of the existing doorway. I have to take some more pics but here's what I got from today.

Basically I'm keen to knock down the existing wall between the walk in closet and the bathroom. However, after opening up that wall on the bathroom side, I can see that the vent line from the kitchen and downstairs bath come right up to this drain......and the tie in via galvanized about 3' off the ground into the stack which is at the end of said wall (that's why they built the wall - to hide the stack).

I can also see that the bathtub has its own 1.5" copper vent coming up from the vent on the wall of the controls up into the ceiling of the 2nd floor of the cape.......and then it ties into the same aforementioned stack.

I haven't quite figured out how to redo this bathroom yet.

Here's a quick video I did of my brother busting up the cast iron tub. You can see the drain vent, stack, and water lines for the old vanity in the wall. This is the wall I'd like to get rid of or perhaps make into a knee wall to hide the toilet.

Also I think it's ok to use those Oatey sure-vents instead of tying into the stack......but maybe that's not preferred?

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Sure-Vent-1-1-2-in-x-2-in-PVC-Air-Admittance-Valve-39016/100201861

https://goo.gl/photos/B2UHco3E55kt14tX7
 

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And thanks for all the responses. They are all extremely helpful and I am very grateful.
 
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Also I think it's ok to use those Oatey sure-vents instead of tying into the stack......but maybe that's not preferred?
AAV's are band-aids, and best go under sinks, hidden in cabinets, where they can be easily replaced. AAV's do fail, worse is that I have actually seen them hidden in walls.

You're already going the whole nine yards here. Don't be afraid to replace as much plumbing as you have exposed with plastic. Plastic plumbing is godsend soft to cut and easy to glue. And when you make mistakes with plastic, it's still cheap so you can do it over again.
 

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Thanks will avoid the aavs if possible. The plumber who worked on my basement used an aav for the 1st floor bath and you can access it from the basement. What I don't understand is that the vent/drain was right there but I guess he didn't want to bother with connecting it.

I saw Terry's posts on how he uses a 4x4 service weight rubber insert for DWV connection. I think that is what I am going to do.

I am, however, unsure of exactly which part I am supposed to drill into to remove the existing connection. I need to move the flange location away from the original back wall so I can rotate the toilet.

Should I drill at the red or the green arrow or both? 1/4" metal bit?


where to drill stack connection.jpg



And also more importantly you don't think that insulation in both these pics is asbestos, right? It had a paper backing and it was not loose filled so I think I'm ok. Right? :D

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Treeman

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In the mid 1900's, asbestos was used in a lot of different building materials: insulation, floor tiles, grout, wallboard, cement........
http://www.ehso.com/cssasbestos/asbestosfoundwhere.htm

It might have been in the vermiculite that I removed from my attic 30 years ago. Nothing you/we can do about it now, except maybe try to follow standard operation procedure moving forward. My thought is that very light exposure is nothing like what industry people were exposed to in their careers, so maybe there is hope. I only brought this up as a result of my required annual asbestos awareness training at work.

Watch out for that Hantavirus from the rodents droppings also! :D And, if anyone thinks I am OCD about this stuff, you should see some of the conditions I have (and do) work in. I should heed my own advice.
 

Jadnashua

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You will want to reinforce that joist that they severely compromised. WHen you notch a joist, you effectively make the whole thing equivalent to the remaining, unmodified depth. It looks like you may have the equivalent of maybe a 2-3" joist there! And, you can't just poke a hole in it that close to a support beam or the end of the joist.

Given the location of the drain line the toilet connects to, you will have problems swapping to plastic...all of the available plastic elbows suitable for use with a toilet will require more depth, and s*** doesn't flow uphill...you need a continuous down slope for it. The copper elbow they used originally is MUCH shallower than any approved plastic ones available today. Remember, you need all sections to slope at least 1/4" per foot...no sections can go flat or uphill from the toilet flange onwards.

The copper pipe fits into a sleeve, and the sleeve is leaded into the bell of the cast iron. So, to remove that section, you'd need to make swiss cheese out of the lead ring, pry it out of the cast iron bell to remove the pipe and fitting. If you take something sharp, you can fairly easily see what parts are lead, and work on the lead, keeping the cast iron intact.

Regarding the vent on the first floor...keep this cardinal rule in mind...once a pipe becomes a drain, it cannot be a vent. So, if that line going up drained the upstairs bathroom, technically, it cannot be a vent for anything...he would have needed to run a line up above where that line stopped being a drain and was a vent to technically work. Now, lots of older houses did not have vents that will pass current codes - the house where I grew up did not, but when doing remodeling, you have to bring the parts you touch up to current codes. The only time waste can share a pipe and be a vent is within one bathroom group on a single floor (it's called wet venting)...you cannot wet vent between floors (anymore). ANd, there are some specific rules that have to be applied for that to work, too.
 

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Ok I have some major concerns now.

When I took out the brass insert in the waste stack to replace with a 4" rubber bushing + 4x3 flush bush.......I noticed that the existing non-notched piece of floor joist was cracked and it literally just broke in two in my hand. Also the toilet flange was not soldered or leaded it- it was just press fit in as it popped right off when I went to pull it to try and jiggle the DWV connection. :mad:

There was no oakum in the DWV connection. :confused:

You can see this in the pics.

The idiots who did this notched the HELL out of the joist as Jadnashua pointed out.....and I have a feeling this is not going to be good for me.

I can see that they notched out the adjacent 4-5 joists for the 1.5" copper drain for the bathtub instead of drilling holes......

I'm leaning towards replacing the entire cast iron waste stack and going to PVC. I don't think I can support the notched beams good enough and it seems to me it's right in the middle third of the joists. There's no way to "fix" the upstairs toilet connection to the CI stack as it's right at the joist.

If I replace the entire stack with pvc, I think that will allow me to do the following:

1) Sister the super notched out joists and install solid 2x6 to connect the sistered joists together.

2) Flip the orientation of the bathtub upstairs to having the drain at the outside wall instead of where it is now. I would go from a right drain to a left drain. For some reason the Americast Cambridge is $100 cheaper at $399 on build.com for the left drain. I don't get it.

I can run a drain from the sink and make two 90s, drill proper holes through the joists, and run new water connections and still go up into the ceiling and reconnect to the stack for venting.

3) The downstairs bathroom joists are also compromised. I just went down there and saw a severely cracked joist I did not see before.

4) I want to install a manifold system as currently everything is connected serially. If anyone turns on any faucet during a shower or flushes a toilet, massive drop in flow.

5) Possibly convert everything to pex. Currently I have copper at the water main, transition to pex to the tankless hotwater heater, and tehn to brass and back to copper at the kitchen and bathrooms.

Of course, this entails ripping out the downstairs bathroom and moving my family out for a while as we won't have a toilet.

I wonder if insurance would cover some of this cost? I have documented everything in this thread as well as with pictures of the initial toilet leaking waste.

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Lordoftheflies

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More pics.

I couldn't quite get the one edge of the bushing in all the way. I don't think it will leak but I think the point is moot now with my updated plan.

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