The Thrill Ride

The toilet in my dad's front bathroom is a thrill ride. I guess I would say it is kind of like a Tilt-a-Whirl. Toilets aren't suppose to be like that =).

My dad asked Linda and Jeff if they would come down to fix that because it is not the toilet that is bad, but the floor is no longer level. As it turns out, there is extensive water damage to the floor and in the wall.

They came down the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I was able to spend the night at my dad's that Friday. Linda decided to work a little bit on the bathroom that night so that in the morning, Jeff could get started on replacing the floor. So, at 1 am Linda started tearing up the bathroom floor (good thing we are all heavy sleepers because that is not a quiet job.)

As Linda was pulling up the linoleum,

a moldy, musty, dank smell permeated through the house. The water damage had happened over the course of several years.

And had worked its way up into the walls.

Probably when I was in Jr. High (I really don't remember how old I was, I just know that I was young) my parents put in new linoleum and a new sink and tried to repaint the bathroom. This what the ancient linoleum looked like, sort of. The old linoleum was more white than yellow, but the pattern was the same.


Growing up this bathroom was always yellow--not a good color when you are trying to put on make-up =). There wasn't a tiled shower either, just an open tub.

A couple of years ago Craig did the tile on around the tub to make a shower. At the time my dad had missionaries living with him and they needed their own bathroom with a shower.

Because there are six kids in my family, we needed a lot of toothbrush holders. This picture only shows three, but there are three more on the other side of the sink.

So, back when my parents put in new linoleum and whatnot, they also tried repainting the bathroom a different color. My mom wanted to paint the bathroom a light pink. All of the walls in my parents' house are painted with oil-based paint, I don't know if that had anything to do with the outcome, but over the course of the years, the yellow bled through and made the walls a peachy color--also not a good color for putting on make-up. But even though this bathroom has had its problems, the best thing about it is its mirrors.

You stand in front of one and adjust the one behind you so that you can see how you are looking in the back. Someday I want this kind of setup in my own bathroom--it is the best! By the time I was growing up, it was really only Linda and Nancy left in the house (the boys might have been there too, but as far as the bathroom was concerned they didn't use it nearly as much as us girls.) With three girls in a bathroom trying to get ready at the same time, you have to be creative as to how you use your resources. So, while one of us was using the sink mirror, the other two would be using the mirror on the door (one of us had to squat down and use the bottom half of the mirror so that the other one could use the top of the mirror). And we would rotate positions depending on what we were needing to do. It was kind of comical to watch.

Once the toilet and the sink cabinet were taken out, it was a lot easier to see where and how extensive the damage was.
The floor had to be completely removed down to the support beams. Jeff ended up having to replace some of the support beams that the floor sits on, in addition to the floor itself.

This picture above doesn't do justice to how far the support beams had sunk. But you can kind of see that the vertical beam is lower than the horizontal beam--it should be level.

Because my dad's house is on a raised foundation, when Jeff took out the floor it was kind of neat to see under the house. A cool air came up from under the house, which would have been very refreshing had it been a hot summer day.

When Jeff removed the sink cabinet, we were able to see how the water had worked its way up into the wood of the cabinet.



Once the toilet, cabinet and bad flooring were removed, Jeff was then able to replace the wood in the wall and in the floor. He patched up the wall and replaced the water valves.

Once that was done, Linda was then able to start priming the walls.

She primed them so that they could switch from an oil-based paint to an acrylic paint. Boy did that primer stink! We had to open up every door and turn on the fans. And to top it off, she had to put two coats of the primer on. We didn't want any colors to bleed through this time.

I think they did a beautiful job with the tile and the paint.
(I know it looks like I really took a picture of the blow-dryer, but I didn't want to step on the tile to remove it before I took the picture.)

The finished bathroom is absolutely beautiful. They did a wonderful job.

Rainer had a hard time looking at all of the mess that was made during the remodel. He wanted to vacuum and clean up every few minutes. Throughout the day he would comment that the bathroom was still broken. While shaking his head, he would say, "Bathroom...broken...still. Uncle Jeff fix it again."

Apparently, Rainer was kind of a drill Sergeant. He would go down to my dad's back bathroom (which also was recently remodeled) and say to the effect that that bathroom was fixed and then he would go to the front bathroom and let Jeff know that he still hadn't fixed Grandpa's front bathroom. I don't know exactly what Rainer said because I wasn't around to hear that one, but I recounted the gist of the conversation.

The first night that we had to leave to go back home, Jeff took Rainer aside and told him that the next time he saw the bathroom it would be fixed. That was the Saturday before Thanksgiving. We went back to my dad's Sunday night to spend the night. The first thing Rainer did when he walked into the house was to check the bathroom. The work on the bathroom had just barely begun, so of course the bathroom wasn't fixed yet. He let Jeff know that the bathroom was still broken and that it was not fixed at all.

(this picture was taken using the door mirror, so the bathroom appears backward from how it really is)

When all the work was finally done, Jeff asked Rainer for his approval. Rainer now says that the bathroom looks pretty. Now when we go down to my dad's, he looks at the bathroom and says, "Uncle Jeff fixed it! Looks pretty!"

I don't think anyone will miss the thrill ride, the new bathroom is just too beautiful.

(Thank you Sheila for the idea to do this blog!) =)