Bathroom Remodel - Day 3 - A new space

Day three took a lot out of me. Sticking your head into a hot attic for awhile really takes a lot out of you quickly.

I was able to remove the fireplace ducting into the attic. Then I started rebuilding the ceiling where the fireplace went through. After that was done framing started going in. My buddy Dean gave me a hand with that, especially when we had to go get some 2x4s. I didn't think of needing them when we made our initial Home Depot order.

Framing everything in helps us see that we have a box that'll be about 22x23 in the corner now. It also makes the bathroom feel so much larger than it was.

We also closed up the hole into the den. We're not going to worry too much about how pretty it is because that wall is going to get cabinets in the future. The den will likely become the new dining room then too. Those are later projects though.

Monday (Day 4) we didn't do much more than pull the paper and boards from the floor of the den and clean up, since we are done in there. It's all bathroom now.

We had an HVAC guy come out today to seal up the old fireplace chimney and help us figure out where to move the bathroom air vent. Glad to have that done even if I didn't like having to bring in a 3rd party to do it.

Tonight we should be able to close up the new space in the bathroom.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 2 - More Fireplace Demo

Finally got the fireplace out! It was a lot more work than expected. I think the house was built around it, because it was not really designed to just slide in and out. We had to tear out some walls and drain some batteries for the reciprocating saw (as well as kill some metal blades). Even the sledgehammer came out. In the end it was out. That took most of the morning!

We demoed the wall in the bathroom carefully, saving the 2x4s. I used them to reframe the hole in the wall that the fireplace left.

This left us with a chance to see what space we could reclaim for the bathrooms for the first time. We are going to be able to reclaim about 80-85% of the space, which is super awesome.

In the picture below I've drawn where the new framing will go. We have to box around the exhaust for the water heater and heater, but that's not too bad. The new space we are gaining will become storage/shelving. We aren't entirely certain yet, but in the meantime it'll be framed out and prepped.

The fireplace chimney is proving to be a simple, but labor intensive fix. Basically we need to remove all the piping up to where it's just in the attic. Then cap it off. When we go to reroof the house in the future, we'll remove the faux chimney box and fireplace cap at that point. Hopefully that'll not have to happen for a few more years yet.

That's the project for tomorrow. After that is done I'll drywall up the hole in the den. Then it should be all bathroom from there!