The Great Bathroom Remodel - Day 3

Well, I can pretty much say, the bathroom is 90% done. All the paneling is installed, and all the seams are caulked. The only things remaining to be done are install the new towel rods, get a new shower curtain and a rod to hang it from, reinstall the toilet, and clean the bathroom.

For those that have been following my rather fast bathroom remodel project, I would wager that you take note that the project space always looks somewhat clean and organized, with of course the exception of the detritus scattered on the floor of the shower and in the sink.

Let me assure, while the bathroom area is organized, the space directly behind me is most assuredly, not.



One thing if you go back to first thread and look at the original bathroom pictures, is that there was a set of hooks that went along the top of the wall in the bathroom that are no longer there.

I removed those when I took the trim ring out to remove the majority of the old bathroom fiberglass. Rather than put them back in, I decided to change around a few things that I had put off doing because I knew a bathroom remodel was going to be necessary after my 3/4 year fulltiming.

One thing I did was remove the towel racks I had on the door, which were never really towel racks of the sort I had wanted originally, but were as close as I could find at Wal-mart. They were really meant to be for hanging your kitchen gear on and a few hand towels.

Now, they're my new wash cloth hanging racks.

I found the old fashioned towel rods I had wanted from the get-go, not too long ago at Bi-Mart. I hadn't thought to look in the plumbing supply area for them, but sure enough, there they were, I'll be obtaining this afternoon after I've had a few hours of sleep.

One thing I also did was remove the suction cups from the shampoo/conditioner/soap rack I had in the bathroom (since suction cups don't work on textured walls) and use a couple of my finish washers and a couple screws to permanently secure it to the wall. On many occasions in the past, the suction cups would dry out and cease to adhere to the original smooth shower walls. I had more than one slightly annoying mess to clean up with the thing would pop loose and dump its contents on the floor.

All the screws securing the shampoo rack, and the wash cloth racks each have a nice dab of caulk to seal each one from water entry.

I used an entire tube of ProFlex to seal that bathroom's seams up, in addition to an entire tube of Colormetric to seal the over lap seams between the old fiberglass and the new, and a QUART sized tube of Polyurethane construction adhesive to glue everything in place.



You can see below where those hanging racks used to be on the doors via the 8 screw holes left behind.....



You can see my medicine cabinet back in place, as well as the toothbrush holder. I still need to obtain a wall mounted holder for the shower head, the original 70s one broke. The squeegee has a suction cup mount, but since it would no longer work on the walls, I use three small tapered head screws to secure it in place. Now, I can also enjoy the fact that my squeegee will be where I left it when I get to my destination, not stuck behind the toilet...



You can see the trim work is all in place now. The silver metal edges are anodized aluminum angle, which have a thick bead of sealant behind them to keep the corners properly sealed.

Its the same stuff I used on the top lip of the toilet riser.



The big blue thing in the left-most of the pictures above is my stomach and my bibs.

Well, all that's left for Day 4 is clean up, a few finish details, and reinstallation of the toilet. The jury still out on swapping to the low-profile thetford to get the seat back down to more normal height, so the current unit will be going back in.

I do sincerly love my upgraded work on the bathroom. The bathroom feels more roomy (If such a thing is possible with a 2' x 3' space), and I have a good deal of wall surface available for utilization.

What I'd love to do is find a shower head mount that I could secure to the vent pipe in the bathroom with a couple of those rubber edged hose clamps . That would look classy and I could aim the shower head directly out into the bathroom.

The Great Bathroom Remodel - Day 2

Well, I've wrapped up Day 2 working on the bathroom and I'm getting closer to completion.

90% of the FRP board is now installed, and the vent pipe has been reinstalled. Unfortunately, the trim rings scraped the paint off a bit, so I'll need to tape everything off around it and touch it up when I do the caulking work tomorrow.

The bathroom is really bright now. That white FRP really boosts the light output of the single bulb fixture in the bathroom. I can only imagine what its going to be like with the mirror fronted medicine cabinet reinstalled.

The trim ring I used around the top of the bathroom is the original trim ring that was in there, I just wiped it with some paint thinner and then applied a bead of sealant along the back (Something it didn't have originally).

And my thanks, again, goes to DakotaCamper for the donation of the Fantastic Fan that's in there as well. That fan has come in really handy for removing the fumes from the remodel work. I just have to remember to pull the bathroom door open all the way or the thing will suck the thing shut, even on low.

Anyway, here's the pictures from today's work, click the image to view it bigger:

The Great Bathroom Remodel - Day 1

My goal is to take a poorly designed and rather cramped camper bathroom and remodel it as much as I could to allow for more room to.... work... while in there for a number of the usual uses.

Since I did some of this already without photos, I'm kinda group about 4 days worth of work into one for sake of reading simplicity.

The Bathroom





Urine Yellow, that's what I call that color. It was probably something else at one point, but time has performed it usual duty on the 35 year old fiberglass and turned it that shade of yellow.

Also, if you'll look at the area next to the sink, that's all wasted space. The only thing back there is the vent stack for the sink and the shower. That's going to be opened up and the pipes framed in as close to them as possible to maximize open space.

If you'll look at the toilet:

A.) that toilet's not even there anymore, I replaced it last year with a High Profile Thetford Aqua Magic V foot flush

B.) Some genius located it in the dead center of the bathroom instead off as close to the back wall of the camper as possible. Since there's really no way to change the entry point of the drain into the tank, the only option is to relocate the closet flange, which is where my original thread came in when I found 45 degree knock-out flanges and 4x3" offset flanges.

The Tear Out

This was perhaps the most annoying part of the whole project. The only real way to remove sections of a one-piece bathroom in a camper is with a utility knife. Since the walls were rather thin, it wasn't too bad, but I spent the better part of the evening blowing fiberglass dust out of my nose after scoring and snapping the old stuff out.







The toilet riser I did a week or so earlier. Its built of 3 hunks of 2x6 plus some 5/8" plywood which is covered in FRP and sealed all around to prevent water intrusion. The riser hides the 6 1/2" rise worth of two 45 degree angles and the new closet flange. One nice thing about RVs is the toilet flange is usually threaded on, so you one you remove the screws that secure it, you can use the toilet's johnny bolts to unscrew it from the main pipe, or at least that's how I wound up doing it.

When I installed that new toilet, it actually wound up overlapping that shower drain in the floor. The new flange is a good 3-4" back from where the original flange was.



If you look closely at the pictures above you can see the exposed drain plumbing and an opening in my ceiling. I had to redo part of the drain plumbing for the sink in the bathroom so that it wouldn't be in the way when I framed in the corner. They originally ran the pipe diagonally behind the the angled corner.

Also, if you look real close at the hole in the ceiling, you can see a black line on the paint from where the original bump out wall of the shower was.

I decided rather than spend the time of boxing in the entire stack, that the portion above the counter would have two trim rims and be painted a nice gloss white to make it look like a support column vs just a vent stack. I painted the section of ABS with Gloss White Appliance epoxy paint and its currently sitting the garage for the grand reinstallation, which will have to wait till I get the hole cut in the new counter top and the FRP cover on it. The trim rings will be slid on, along with the counter top, then the pipe will be glued back together thus locking them all in place.

The Rough Frame In



This the new corner build up, its made all of 5/8" plywood that's glued and screwed together. It'll be covered in FRP when its ready.

The wall behind the sink originally didn't have a wooden backer panel. It was just open 1x1" wood that was on the other side of the paneling that made up the side of the wardrobe cabinet. I added some 1x2 material to give the medicine cabinet something better to fasten to, then using the old backer off an wardrobe that we converted to an entertainment center (It wasn't staining the right color to match the rest of the wood) I paneled over the wall so that the FRP had a solid backer to glue to (Also whey there's a round hole in it, that was where the cords were supposed to go through on the wardrobe).

The New FRP Wall Panels

This was as far as I got today, doing the Rough Frame In, and putting in the first two big sections of FRP. Lemme tell you something about that stuff. It may act as flexible as a noodle in a 4x8 sheet, but its like trying to bend iron in smaller pieces. You can get it to curve, but you better have you screws and glue ready to lock in place cause it'll push back at you while you hold it in place.

The below give you an idea of the finished color of the bathroom, with the exception of the floor, and the sink area. The remaining wall of the original material is going to be gone over, I just didn't remove it since it saved work on having to frame in over the other vent pipe that comes up along side the bathroom. A bead of adhesive sealant is laid along the perimeter and the middle is covered with a strong polyurethane construction adhesive, same stuff I used to help secure it to the bare paneled walls. Once this stuff cures, it'll be strong and flexible.





Anyway, that's as far as I got on Saturday, I'll be continuing on Sunday and should hopefully have all the paneling done and then I can start the caulking work to seal everything up good and tight.