DIY Bathroom Remodel | First Time Renovation for $4k

this was my old bathroom it was really out of date dark and just disgusting the shower felt really enclosed and gross and it was just time for a much needed renovation now my mom had originally wanted to hire a contractor to do this work but i told her that i thought i could do it so i gave it my best shot i should mention that i am only 22 and i haven't done most of the work involved with this type of thing before but i am an electrician so i have some hands-on experience as well as a lot of tools that made the whole project a lot easier so let's get into it [Music] [Music] i began ripping out the walls and the chunks and breaking them down into smaller pieces so that i could fit them in garbage bags this was a mistake i should have rented a bin from the very beginning but i didn't think it was necessary because of the size of the bathroom it was really surprising to see just how much material comes out of bathroom even of this size when i got to the mortar bed i was very discouraged it was very difficult to get it started but once i had one chunk out the rest came out pretty easily although i will say this stuff is heavy [Music] at this time i then decided i'd start running some of my electrical i did this so that i'd have some real working light so i drilled out the location of where i'd be putting in my pot lights and ran wires to temporary pigtails i checked to see how the old fixtures were wired and was able to take one of the lines and reroute it to my pot light i did this so that i would avoid fishing down to the switches it's just less work next came the floors and this was tricky the first section that you see me doing now actually came up pretty easily is the floor wasn't properly adhered to the subfloor nonetheless having an sds for this part with a tile scraping bit was essential i could not imagine doing this without it with all the tiling out i could move on to the shower it was really important to me to make this feel a lot more open so i widened the shower door and removed the header i began taking out all the old nails and then framed in my new features my mom really wanted a shower bench so i framed one out and tried to keep it as small as i could to preserve the floor space the shower's just not very big so i think this size bench fits perfectly with the size of it i made sure to slope everything towards the drain this includes the bench the niche and the curb for the niche i would be using the kerdi schluter prefab niche so i cut out a space in my two by is here and then just kind of framed out some extra support for it nothing too fancy now my ceilings here really didn't have any uh support so i had a couple two by fours and used my laser to keep it all flush with the existing ceiling uh the laser came in handy so many times throughout this job it was really an essential tool at this point it was time to call it a day so i put a couple of shark bite end caps on my supply lines and turn my water back on the next day i started working on the plumbing and i gotta say i really enjoyed this pex is a really beginner friendly system and it goes together in a really straightforward manner to convert my copper to pex i used the sharkbite connectors and i talked to a couple plumbers before doing this and they all had good things to say about them i used a 2x4 to frame my shower valve with and in the future i would use a 2x6 while the 2x4 did work it was just a little tight here you can get an idea of just how much stuff came out of that bathroom and this isn't even all of it just something to keep in mind if you're going to be trying this yourself the old fan in this bathroom was only 50 cfm so it had to go i put in a new one rated at 100 cfm and while i was at it i decided to relocate it to a more central position something else i did with this is i actually put in a timer before i would always leave the fan running for hours as i would just forget to turn it off so i would highly recommend having your fan on a timer the old gfi in this bathroom was a little too high up for my liking so i decided to move it down and when i did so i found a nice little berry junction box so i took that out got enough slack on my wires and cut out a hole a little bit lower at this time i also chose to run the wire for my led mirror uh i didn't put in the switch for this just yet because i wasn't sure if i wanted to have one but i did end up doing that i also ran an lvt from my shower niche into the vanity and then took a 14-2 from one of my led paw lights and ran it to the same spot in the vanity the shower walls are actually inside of the garage so i made sure to put in some new insulation and vapor barrier [Music] [Music] so and time for drywall as the ceiling was going to be just painted over i went with the green board just to give it that little bit extra protection and then for the walls i just went with regular drywall and before you panic i am using the schluter kerdi membrane so they themselves recommend this [Music] and here is the finished drywall so you can see that i've got some pretty significant gaps in my corners the shower wasn't square and this was my first time doing this i just pre-filled those and they turned out good but it was just really nice to kind of get an image of what the final product was going to look like this wall here i was going to be putting a backsplash over but i had extra sheets of drywall and i figured it'd be a good opportunity to practice some mudding i should have brought the drywall all the way down it would have made putting the vanity in a lot easier but you live and learn while i've done minor drywall repairs in the past i've never done anything to this extent it probably took me a good five coats and lots of sanding to get this to an acceptable level this was definitely my least favorite part of the project [Music] [Music] the old shower drain was done in inch and a half abs the schluter drain requires two inch so i put in a reducer and got that ready when i ripped out the old floor i noticed the section around the toilet had rotten this was two layers the top layer being quarter inch ply and i was easily able to poke through it with a screwdriver the bottom layer while discolored was actually still really solid so i ripped out the top layer sprayed the bottom with some mold killer and put a new sheet over top i then secured it all down with some flooring screws and got rid of any other squeaks in the floor the waterproof membrane was interesting i'm a very messy worker and this is no exception by the end of it i was absolutely covered in mud i made a pretty significant mistake here in which i had started out with the first three sheets or so and using a grout float to get rid of all excess thinset it just wasn't really doing the job and later on i switched over to using a drywall knife and had much better results you can see me periodically peeling back the membrane i'm doing this just to check for 100 coverage whenever i didn't have it i just threw more thinset on the wall and trialled it all out overall i did enjoy this product but there's absolutely a learning curve involved [Music] with the walls done i then moved onto the floor since i had no access to my plumbing from below i put the flange in first you can see me put some weights on top of this i was just a little nervous about it not adhering properly to the floor and i wanted to be sure it didn't shift around as it dried the floor was one of my favorite parts of this system it was just easily cut to size and dropped into place into my shower i didn't have to mess around with dry pack mortar and making sure my sloping was done right [Music] i gave everything a chance to dry and then did a flood test thankfully it passed now here you get a real good idea of just how messy i am i know despite that though i will say that i am very confident in the waterproofing done in the shower while it may not be the prettiest thing to look at it's gonna be covered with tile so i ain't worried my outside corners gave me some troubles so i put a little strip over wherever i had a gap and i actually missed a section of band here so i did that afterwards i also had a couple of corners that weren't very tight like this one you can see it's rounded out i was a little worried going into that that tiling was going to be very tricky but it turned out to be okay before setting tile i wanted to get the floors done too for this i'd be using ditra so i pre-cut all my pieces and did a dry fit i then wet down my floor to ensure proper adhesion this system was a lot more straightforward than the wall membrane was and it was just really easy to use [Music] it was finally time to start tiling i first decided to do my backsplash for the niche and the floor for this i'd be using the same mosaic sheets and it went okay i made a mistake in which i didn't use tile spacers between my sheets so now that the floor is finished if i look closely i can actually see where the sheets were you might not notice it if you weren't looking for it but since i did it i fear that i'm always going to see it overall this went okay i also grouted them at this time and i'm not sure if i should have done that because i was using a white grout and there were so many grout lines it was just very hard to keep it clean during the construction process once i finished my floor and it had dried i threw some cardboard on it and started with the walls because i was using large format tiles here i made sure to use a tile leveling system i think this was one of my favorite parts of the project it was just extremely satisfying to click in those wedges and see your tiles become perfectly flush with one another also once again shout out to the laser for coming in clutch honestly getting your first row level is essential and having a laser to do that is just a huge benefit now i'll tell you guys i must have measured that niche's height a dozen times and i still got it wrong when i was doing my measurements i had assumed that the tile's dimensions were 12 by 24 inches when in reality porcelain tile is smaller than that dimension so to fix this i increased my grout lines to 3 16 thick and then did one big border around my niche it actually ended up looking pretty good thankfully but i was quite nervous at that point [Music] [Music] one other great benefit to the tile leveling system is removing it i don't know why but there's just something really satisfying about knocking those wedges out of place i didn't have my mallet and i used the back end of the screwdriver and it worked out really well because i was doing this work in my evenings and on the weekend i didn't always have a lot of time to get things done so when it came time to these walls i just did one wall at a time took my time and did it right i think it's also a lot more palatable this way uh doing something like this it can be very tedious and spreading it out over a week doing a couple hours a night made it just a lot easier [Music] so [Music] i wanted this niche to act as a really nice centerpiece for the shower so i put in these chrome profiles and gave them nice sleek miter cuts they do make prefab 90s that you can use but i think this way just looks a lot more professional i went with chrome as i'd be using that throughout the bathroom and i also took this time to test my led lights for the lights all i did was i poked my low voltage wire through the top corner of the niche and then filled it with silicone i used the schluter sg profile in the corner and then laid my led strip which was ip65 rated into it i put a diffuser on and it looks nice for my shower entrance i went with the same profiles and put them all the way up now i made a little bit of an oopsie here in which i cut my tiles a little too narrow it's not a huge deal but the profiles just aren't completely flush with the two walls so something i can definitely improve upon in the future and here is the first look at the finished tiling still got to grout it but this was a really happy moment for me it just it felt like my work had finally paid off i know it's not perfect but considering it's my first time doing this i think it's pretty good for the grout we end up going with a white we weren't sure whether white or gray was going to look better but i think the white was a good choice it makes the shower just feel a little bit cleaner and a little more open [Music] my curb unfortunately was not completely flush with the wall to the left of it so i took some quarter inch plywood and some pl and clamped it into place after that i got to the floor all i did here was cut out all my pieces did a dry fit and then got to work i used the same tile leveling system as with the walls but went with 1 8 grout [Music] lines [Music] [Music] [Music] when i did my shower walls i was able to clean out all the grout lines with the q-tip with the floor however i didn't want to walk on it as it was setting so i let a lot of the excess thinset dry between the grout lines i took a grout removal tool in a vacuum and cleaned them out as best as i could when it came time to pour in the grout i made it a little too runny but it worked out after getting all the grout lines i went back to the beginning and started working off all the excess grout with a wet sponge i worked it at 45 degree angles as to not take any out from the lines themselves and waited a couple of hours before going back for the haze [Music] and here is the finished floor it turned out pretty good with the exception of the dividing area between the two sections of the bathroom i didn't level my floors out beforehand and i had to pay for it here i had lippage on two tiles other than that though it turned out pretty good so lesson learned self-leveling clips and thinset will only get you so far [Music] with the floor finished i could now do the trim i went with a pine here as opposed to an mbf as i didn't want it falling apart i also got to pick up this brand new toy and anytime i have an excuse to get a new toy well it's a good day [Music] i installed some trim here to transition from that one wall of the tile into this area and it also just created a really nice accent on this wall i think my mom did all the painting and once that was done i quickly ruined it getting this vanity in place was a bit of a struggle but in the end it fit in quite nicely with the vanity installed and leveled i could now do the backsplash i chose to leave a gap where the mirror was this would help with reducing costs installing the mirror and adding support it's a lot easier to drill through drywall than it is tile [Music] [Music] this is the driver for the led lights in the niche i made sure to get one that was dimmable as it's tied into the pot lights which will be on a dimmer switch i mounted a piece of plywood to help support my mirror and then made the connections and hung it up i should have installed the trap for the sink drain before putting the vanity in but i just kind of forgot about it oops [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] in order to install the shower door i had to drill through both the tile and the waterproofing i was a little nervous about doing this so i filled almost everything with silicone [Music] [Music] and here is the finished product there's still some minor things left to do like painting touch-ups adding decor and just bringing a little bit more life into this bathroom but the majority of the work is done and i'm pretty happy with it not everything went exactly as i had planned but in the end we got there hey it's me i just wanted to say thanks for watching i put a lot of time and effort into making this video and if you enjoyed maybe think about subscribing and leaving a like i will be making more of these videos in the future so i would also really appreciate any feedback you have for me and that's it thank you for watching i hope you enjoyed and i'll see you later you

Channel: Workin' with Wolkon

Views: 1,147,423

Rating: 4.9573526 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: icDyzuMjLtQ

Length: 28min 58sec (1738 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/tjk2084]

Fantastic work! May I ask what tool you used to cut the plywood on the floor around the toilet mount? It looked like a multi tool with a steady hand, but I wasn’t sure.

[u/HephaestusGOF]

I do tile for a living and wouldn't do anything differently besides using spin doctors for the floor.

[u/Truthful27]

Looks good

[u/b89nldb]

Looks really good! Well done!

[u/nolotusnote]

Which laser level is this?

[u/subkamran]

Awesome work, I can't believe you went with doing a bathroom as your first reno! I've been working up to doing our main and master baths by learning in the basement (if I mess up, it's a basement so... low impact lol).

Right now I'm documenting the journey to remodeling my wife's craft room. I'm doing a new ceiling/floor, new lighting, and I made a design plan in some fancy software. Hopefully it turns out well!

I'll be following your journey, keep it going!

[u/Traumfahrer]

It looks like you grouted the corners in the shower and then later on put silicone beads over it?