When it comes to home construction projects, I am far better at taking things apart than I am putting them back together. Such was the case this past weekend as I decided the time had finally come to start a bathroom remodeling project that I had been putting off for several months.
I blame the DIY Network for many of my home projects dilemmas. My wife and I enjoy watching all the renovation shows on the network. Those shows often make things seem so simple. I mean, how hard can it be to retile a shower or install a kitchen backsplash?
If you know what you are doing or have a TV host there to assist, I’m sure I wouldn’t have any problems either. Sadly, the bathroom crashers do not travel this far north because I have spent many hours wandering aimlessly through home improvement stores and no television crew has ever come up to me asking if I needed help with a project.
In our home, the upstairs bathroom has been dubbed “the kids’ bathroom,” since both of their bedrooms are located on the second floor. In said bathroom, there is a shower stall, which also served as our primary shower for the first year we owned the home.
Originally, our downstairs bathroom came only with a bathtub, which meant every morning I had to drudge up the stairs, half asleep to walk into a shower stall that seemed ridiculously small for someone of my size. It finally occurred to me one day that we needed to put a shower in our downstairs bathroom.
Since that day, I have rarely set foot in the kids’ bathroom. Cleaning the room is on their weekly chore list and I am only summoned to the room if there is a problem, such as when a light bulb is burned out or some sort of insect is found crawling around the window.
Several weeks back, I was summoned to the bathroom for just such an emergency.
“DAAADDDY, there’s a bug in the bathroom!” my youngest daughter shrieked. Apparently girls and bugs do not go well together, which means my time is often spent removing them from our home.
During this bug expedition, I happened to glance into the shower and spotted a loose piece of tile. Upon further investigation, which is always a bad thing and should only be approached by those with the appropriate skill set, I discovered a great many loose tiles.
Now I was faced with a problem. Do I try to reattach the loose tiles or simply shut down the shower until there was time to sufficiently tackle the problem. I chose the latter.
So for the past few weeks, the children and their many, many bathing products invaded our downstairs bathroom. How many bottles of shampoo and body wash are really needed to clean a pair of children? The answer is 12, because that is how many bottles came with them. There were multiple bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body wash because apparently girls can’t use the same shampoo or soap on consecutive washings. Who knew?
Give me one bottle of shampoo-and-conditioner in one and a bar of soap and I am good to go.
So after a few weeks of dodging miscellaneous bottles in the bathtub, I decided the time had come to reclaim our bathroom and finally start working on their girls’ room this past weekend. I quickly discovered that replacing the loose tiles was simply not going to be an option.
On to Plan B, which meant tearing out the tiles and hoping there was no water damage behind them. Once I started, it crossed my mind that I should probably turn the water off to the shower, just in case. Fortunately, there was an access panel hidden in a bookcase outside the bathroom.
As fate would have it, the tiles popped off rather easily, but as I was taking them down I noticed something odd. The tiles had been glued directly onto plywood. I’ve seen tiling projects on those home renovation shows and I am pretty sure applying tile to plywood is not the preferred way to do things.
Once all the tiles were down, I was then faced with a new problem. What to do about the plywood? Ripping that out is probably the next thing to do, but I am going to wait to see what a more seasoned plumber has to say before I start demolition. Or at least until we watch another renovation show.
For now, the minefield of cleaning products in our bathroom will continue. So if I happen to grab the wrong bottle while half asleep some morning and smell like strawberries and cream or some other goofy scent, you will know the reason why.
Joseph Cyr is a staff writer for the Houlton Pioneer Times. He can be reached at pioneertimes@nepublish.com or 532-2281.
