Second Bath & Hall: Framed!
Home Rooms: Second Bath Jobs: Demolition & Framing
To the left is the floorplan before we began work. Wayne disliked the two doored bath and wanted to add a half bath, so off to the drawing board for us!
Wayne used computer-aided design (CAD) software to draw up some proposed bathroom plans. We finally decided to get rid of the three closets in the area and create a new hallway between the bedrooms. This meant demolishing some walls and making some new ones.
What We Did: Framing
- First came the demolition. Using hammers and crowbars, we tore the plaster off the walls and removed the wooden lath beneath. See the front room page for more details on lath and plaster.
- Removed studs from walls we were taking down (none were load bearing walls), and repaired any damaged studs. (The photo to the right is Wayne cutting away some rotten sections where the bathtub used to be.)
- Prepped the subfloor. Scraped off the old, icky, dark brown vinyl floor and made sure the remaining floor was free of exposed nails and debris. Replaced any damaged boards.
- Reused some of the studs to create new walls. Wayne assembled the walls before putting them in place. This is done by making the wall shorter than it's full height so that it can more easily be tilted into place.
- A top plate is nailed to the ceiling joists, which makes up the difference between the pre-assembled wall's height and the finished wall height. (It is important to make the longest wall first, so you have the largest space available to work in.)
After the framing, there was still much to do to finish the walls. First there was the plumbing, then the electrical. Exterior walls needed to be insulated (we used all-cotton batts that are actually shredded up blue jeans).
Finally, the walls could be closed up with plasterboard. We decided to go with blue-board, a wall board made of gypsum that has blue paper on one face. The paper is treated to allow a thin layer of finish plaster to adhere. This veneer of plaster has a nice feel to it that closely matches the rest of the house's lath and plaster walls.
Here are some more photos of the demo and framing process...
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| Gutted bath room. The doorway on the right is the former master closet door, now the doorway into the master bedroom. The doorway on the left was for the bathroom. We closed that up. | Framed bath and hall. You can see the closed up doorway on the left, and the skeleton of the new walls. | Hall with blue-board up. This more clearly shows the walls and new spaces. You can see a tiny bit of the laundry alcove (on the left) and the entry to the main bath. |
Additional photos of this area can be seen on the Before and After page, as well as the Photo Gallery page.
Here's the floor plan for the bath area after all our work was done...
