One Room Challenge Week 2: Demo and Details!

Welcome back to our One Room Challenge adventure here at J(M)V Style! If you’re joining us for the first time, a little refresher on the ORC:

The One Room Challenge is put together by Linda of Calling it Home for design bloggers twice a year, challenging them to makeover a space in the span of just 6 short weeks, with weekly updates so everyone can follow along in real time.

For each challenge, there are 20 featured bloggers– a group of super talented designers that we’ll follow every Wednesday. We’ve joined in as guest participants, and you’ll get to see what we’re up to every Thursday! We’re working on our outdated master bathroom, turning it into the Modern Nautical space of our dreams- a quick review of our plans below:

Since last week, we’ve been elbow-deep in demo, as there has been a ton of work to do before we can get to all the fun stuff. A quick rundown of all the dirty work we’ve got to do to really get this project started:

Remove all the fixtures: vanity, countertop, mirror, hook and hanging hardware, shower fixtures, shower door, etc. ✓

Pull up all the floor trim and set aside ✓

Demo all current tile and cement board/hardibacker ✓

Replace the valves for the pipes that feed the vanity sinks ✓

Tear out the existing curb and shower pan ✓

Replace water-damaged studs ✓

Replace pipe coupling and shower drain ✓

Replace toilet flange and wax ring ✓

Replace soft sections of subfloor ✓

A few notes below:

1. Pro Tip: When removing a toilet, set it down immediately into a trash bag in case there’s any residual water, and if you’re storing it in your dining room for three weeks… Also, I liked this photo because of Ben’s legs.
2. Look who didn’t paint behind the toilet! About halfway through tile demo here, and you can see the vanity valves haven’t been repaired yet.
3. The shadow along the wall shows a soft spot where water was likely getting through. Also: I know the wax ring is disgusting, but that’s how it’s supposed to look. Another Pro Tip: plug the toilet pipe with a rag to keep the pipe clean and keep the fumes from entering the bathroom.
4. You can see the tile and cement board under the door frame. NOT. FUN.
5. We cut out a specific soft spot in the subfloor using our circular saw. Instead of having several patched areas though, we decided to replace a large section- shown in #10
6. Shower pipe before a new coupling was installed.
7. Demo’d shower area.
8. Rehabbed shower area, with new exterior studs, new drain pipe (to be cut later, obvs), tar paper base, and new curb.
9. NICHES! They’re doing a pretty killer job holding tools here, so I’m pretty confident about the new shampoo storage situation.
10. New subfloor and toilet pipe!

We’ve had a blast sharing details on our instagram story- you can follow along here for those daily updates.

We also thought it would be helpful to share a few success and challenges from this week:

Good: Our Ryobi Hammer Drill was totally invaluable in helping get our old tile out. We used this in addition to a good old-fashioned hammer and chisel, and it was the best way to break up the mortar underneath so that large sections of tile could be pulled up. Don’t be fooled: removing tile is no joke, but the hammer drill definitely made it better. Another lifesaver? Our Ridgid Shop Vac. Pulling up the old tile/mortar/backer created A.LOT.OF.DUST. and sweeping didn’t seem to accomplish much. The shop vac was perfect for all the dust and small pieces, and we were also able to use it to help clean out the shower and toilet pipes before replacing the couplings and flanges. (Not sponsored, we just wanted to share two things that really made life better for us).

Bad: It feels like 80% of renovation work is cursing the people that came before you. A lot of little things can add up to a lot more work. They used nails to attach the cement board and hardibacker, which made it a lot tougher to pull those pieces up, since they had to be pried out instead of unscrewed. They also installed the door frames and jambs over the tile, so it was really challenging to remove the tile from under those frames. The way the flanges were installed for the vanity valves meant we had to cut down the pipes and fully replace the valves as well. Not terrible, but unexpected projects like that aren’t super fun, and can make the work take a lot longer. Since we’re DIYing every bit of this project, that time really adds up.

We’re in danger of talking for too long over here, so we’ll talk about a few things that are up next on the agenda, and then it’s time for us to jump back into it! Luckily, we have finally moved past the “destruction” phase of the renovation, and now we can focus on “construction”.

Up next?

Install hardibacker everywhere tile will be placed

Build shower pan

Repair drywall

Paint walls

Install tile!

We also jumped into some purchasing, picking up the lights (double gloss white with teak!), artwork, hardware for an artwork DIY (thank you for the inspiration Teal & Gray!), towels, and toothbrush cup. The jury’s still out on final decisions for the other textiles, so we’re not set on our closet drapery or rug yet. But, I. CAN’T. WAIT. to see these beauties start arriving!

Hopefully this time next week this room will start looking a lot more like a room. And.. since it’s more fun to end things with a pretty picture, we’re keeping our eyes on this prize: