Bathroom Renovation – August 2021

At the end of last month, for a few days, I had my bathroom fixed. It isn’t visible in the pictures, but the metal tub was rusting through around the drawn, and there were other issues.

The bathroom had a half tile wall around, a soffit over the shower where ductwork ran from the building heating system to the exterior vent, and a few other challenges.

The renovation gutted the bathroom down to the studs and the cement, where I discovered there was none under the drain…just dirt, and the source of one of the problems. There was leaking from the bathroom above, which had to be fixed as well.

The bathroom was original to the building, built in 1976, while the blue was a nice enough color, it made it hard to replace easily. I had no spare tiles. So, in replacement, I opted to only retile the shower stall itself in white subway tile(something easily to get for years to come), and just replace the sheetrock elsewhere, so it could be repainted in a few years as needed.

I’m too tall for the bathtub, so hadn’t really used it, so went with a shower pan and doors.

This is a small bathroom, so I also had the floor retiled in black slate, and replaced the toilet(which was last replaced in the 90s) with a dual flush toilet…which was illegal in New York City till 2010, and a mechanical bidet toilet seat. I previously had added a mechanical bidet attachment. While some people have issues with bidets…I save a lot of toilet paper by using it.

Mechanical bidet seats, or attachments work by splitting the cold water intake on your toilet. The fancier models may branch off your hot water, or may have electric features, but that was unnecessary for my purpose.

The biggest change to the bathroom that I’d wanted for years was electrical.For one, I have an outlet inside the cabinet over my toilet, which allows me to charge my shaver and electric toothbrush inside.

There was originally a single light fixture over the sink. That is gone, replaced by three ceiling lights. These are disc lights, which are the latest replacement for traditional recessed lighting. A hole is still cut in the ceiling, and a junction box placed inside to convert to the appropriate voltage, with the disc light being connected and clipped into place. This allowed for one to be inside the shower itself, which was always dark, one in the middle of the room, and one over the sink. They are also temperature adjustable, if you remove them and adjust a switch, if I wanted.

Finally, the switch for the exhaust fan was replaced with a timer switch with a built in humidity sensor, so it can be safely left on till the humidity returns to lower levels. I previously just used a timer switch, this gives it a little more intelligence.

I think the final result turned out well. Nothing I bought was particularly expensive, individually, and I tried to pick things that I thought would hold up. I even got them to run a network cable through the wall between the rooms on either side, for future proofing, before they sealed it up.