Basement Bath [Parents house]
Purpose: Used to do a lot of a home maintenance for parents when I was younger (more landscape type work). Figured I would do the basement bathroom as it has never really been functional.
Front and back of the room. Hole in the floor was because of a furnace upgrade which ended up sitting lower than the drain and required immediate plumbing changes. I probably wouldn’t have vouched to switch the fixtures if there wasn’t already an existing hole in the foundation.
Took the dimensions of the room and created a quick CAD mock-up with what my mom had in mind. General idea was to switch the shower with the lavatory and break the existing wall of the alcove shower to open it up for a larger wet room. The 8’4” wall is a foundational wall with no insulation which I plan to frame, insulate, and run 1.5” ABS pipe for the lav dry vent to the air stack so the width of the room is an approximate but plan to lose a couple of inchs.
Some safety gear: Demo gloves, respirator, protective glasses, and hearing protection. I initially started with the hammer and chisel to break tile off the wall before giving in and reaching for the rotary hammer.
Everything was relatively straight forward. The floor was two layers of ceramic tile. Drywall came down extremely easy (foundational drywall was damp). While disconnecting the P-trap and water supply lines, I removed the lavatory to the image on the right. Noticeable efflorescence and concerns about potential asbestos. It appeared the lavatory was sitting on flooring that the house was originally built on (some type of old vinyl). Also cool to see the usage of older 1960’s building materials (tar paper as moisture barrier), and aluminum wiring.
Source: Canada, Natural Resources. “Keeping the Heat in - Section 6: Basement Insulation: Floors, Walls and Crawl Spaces.” Natural Resources Canada, / Gouvernement du Canada, 26 Apr. 2021, natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/homes/make-your-home-more-energy-efficient/keeping-the-heat/section-6-basement-insulation-floors-walls-and-crawl-spaces/15639#a6-2.
Interesting to see how mud rooms used to be built. Tile over mortar and wire mesh. I did a lot of demo hammering and sledging the wall to break up the mortar, prying the mesh free, and using a cut off tool on the mesh with a diamond blade. Strong recommendation to pry from the top-down as there’s a high chance the weight of the mortar will start to collapse on itself and rip some of the wire below. I’m using tools I already own or I would’ve probably just rented a concrete saw.
By the time I finished with the mud wall I noticed I was standing on top of about a foot of mortar and ceramic tile debris. Started cleaning by shoveling the junk in Brute bins and moving it up two flights of stairs.
What I do to remove a thick shower bed of mortar: Score it in quarters with a cut-off tool / angle grinder, wedge a rotary hammer in with a chisel bit and the vibrations will propagate the cracks to break like a pizza in 4 ~75 lb slices that you can pry up and deadlift. Personally I always found the jackhammer to be too time consuming and create a lot of dust.
Once I removed the lumber framing to the alcove I was so surprised how much larger the room looked and tried to keep a similar camera angle in my photograph. I still need to infill the window and parge the foundational wall before applying rigid foam.
Window faced an outside staircase that was presumably open at one time and provided sunlight into the washroom. The stairs were closed off and the opening was stuffed with fiberglass batt. I smashed everything, removed the mold infested insulation, and let TSP sit on the perimeter. I ended up infilling the hole with concrete blocks and Type N mortar.
Reused wire mesh from the mud wall to patch the holes. I’m not entirely sure why there were so many holes as the electrical still ran between the wall. My assumption is that wire did previously run through the concrete blocks, or it was done to sit the electrical box further into the wall. Either way I dislike it because it gives an access point for insects. Realistically parging the interior is a little overkill, but I have enough TSP and parging mix to do it anyway.