I'll be very interested in seeing what you do since your powder room is exactly like mine and I've been thinking of redoing it.

Good luck and post pics!
Elaine

Here's the result of day one:
My DH removed the floor (a royal pain, made easier with a wonder bar and lots of elbow grease) and took the toilet to a needy friend. I stripped wallpaper for 3 1/2 hours. 2 walls down, 2 to go. It wasn't too bad as wallpaper stripping goes. They didn't glue it directly to the drywall without painting first or anything. But it's still painstaking.

DH also pulled up the carpet in the garage entry/mudroom. Who puts carpet in an entry way? The same people who put it in the kitchen. Here's before and after:


It'll all look so much better with some tile.

Thanks so much for documenting your remodel...It takes a good bit of time and effort and your efforts in the kitchen forum are to be applauded.

And so it starts again! More inspiration for us DIY-wannabes!

Thanks for starting this thread...we are also redoing our Powder Room with our Kitchen...and you PR looks similar to ours. What are it's dimensions? (Ours is 4'6" x 4'6") It will be fun (for us) to watch the progress...especially since you and DH are so productive!

Good luck! [And, Merry Christmas!]

Buehl: Our PR is 5' wide and 5.5' deep.

This evening, another hour and a half stripping wallpaper finished off the task. Meanwhile, DH was rerouting a drain pipe that we found embedded in the built-in-pantry inside the laundry room that was very awkward. The pantry was awkward, that is (lots of doors competing with each other), and when we demo'd it, the drain pipe was coming down the center of the room. So here's his handiwork.

While he was working on it, I went upstairs for something and used the bathroom while I was at it. And yes, I flushed (doh!). Fortunately DH had gone into the garage for something, so it just dumped onto the subfloor. And even more fortunately it was only liquid waste. I apologized 6 ways from Sunday and we had a good laugh. But as I was putting down the underlayment, I was treated to the smell of pee the whole time.

Speaking of underlayment, DH played the role of expert thinset mixer wonderfully, and I cut and laid the Ditra. After doing a couple bathrooms with Hardibacker, I can't say enough good about how easy this stuff is to work with. I swear, if they made t-shirts that said "I heart Ditra" I'd buy one.

So here's the fruits of today's labors.

Our granite came in today for the kitchen counters, so we were distracted supervising the installation, and then of course I had to start organizing all my worldly kitchen belongings. We did tear ourselves away from the kitchen for an hour or so, and got a chunk of tile laid in the mudroom.

It's a little tricky figuring out what sequence/direction to lay the tile. It's a continuation of the pattern from the kitchen, but if you lay from there (which you have to do), you back yourself into a corner in one of the 3 rooms or out the garage. So we're having to be satisfied with doing smaller chunks, then using them as launch pads/stepping stones once they're dry to get the rest.

OH.MY.GOSH. I swear I just about peed my pants after reading that you flushed "liquid waste" all over the subfloor. My husband would have DIED...and I doubt he would have laughed about it.

Everything looks great! Can't wait to see the rest! And I hope you're going to post your granite on the kitchen forum! I've been following your progress over there too!!

I am so jealous of folks who use Ditra. It was hard for us to get when we were doing our laundry room and bathroom, so we used Durock...and of course NOW I see it in convenient-size rolls in HD, whereas when I'd asked about ordering it there a year ago, when it was evidently available in *other* HDs across the country, the guys there looked at me like I was nuts. UGH.

And you want a worse story about flushing at in opportune moments? I plum forgot that our plumber had said not to flush upstairs while he was working in the crawlspace....alas, I can write no further...at least it was just pee...he said he'd experienced worse.

I bought him lunch for a couple of days after that.

More tile tonight...finished the little coat closet and went as far into the bathroom as I could within stepping reach of a dry tile. Lots of cutting/fitting around the doorways, edges, and vent, which becomes quite the mental challenge when you're doing this pattern with 2 different sized tiles. When there's a small cut piece and you're trying to figure out what size tile goes next to it AND what shape to cut it in, it gives a good workout to your spatial visualization skills.

We're off to my sister's for the holidays, where we plan to spend a couple days helping her and her DH with some home projects (our Christmas gift to them). We'll be back next Thursday to continue our project. Completion by New Year's is our goal!

WOW, what a project you have going on. I am just working on a small powder room and it is just about to drive me over the edge. We choose a tile very similar to yours, laid the tile yesterday, lots of small cuts as well. Will need to grout today. Any tips on grouting from you??

Thanks for the plumbing chuckle, I nearly shared your pain. I just finished attaching the plumbing for the new bathroom to the existing stack, and we had a few close calls. After the second scare I went upstairs and taped the toilet seat shut :)

And tell your husband he got off easy...

The up:

And the down:

gagesgranny: We've used epoxy grout on the 3 rooms we've tiled. I've never used the regular kind, which I understand is easier, so can't give you any tips on that. But if you use the epoxy stuff, just fill up the joints thoroughly and clean it well.

codnuggets: Wow, that's a plumbing freeway system! DH wants to know what's with the snaky route on the upstairs piping?

Snaky is one way to describe it. The short answer is that the shower drain had to be vented before it could enter the main line. Right next to the cast iron stack is the only place I could get it to the attic given shower fixtures, HVAC, windows, and other stuff in surrounding walls. That plus a bunch of venting rules regarding verticality and flood levels and other code related mumbo-jumbo. The extra turns and twist were necessary to get everything to line up correctly, maintain proper slope, and hit the Y directly under the vent tee. I'm sure it could have been done a little simpler, but part of the challenge was that this is my second attempt having had the first try almost wholly rejected by the inspector and I was reusing some sections of preassembled stuff. That would be part of the long answer, I'll spare you the drama mostly because I'm trying to wipe it from my memory. I just finished redoing the sink/toilet venting today, and it looks just about as bad. The next guy who remodels this house is going to scratch his head for a good while if he ever opens up this stuff :)

We're finally back from our holiday away, and diving back into our powder room, etc. remodel. We managed to get the Ditra down for the laundry room....

I really like how big it is without the washer & dryer awkwardly cramped in the corner. I can't wait until we have our upstairs laundry built and can convert this completely to a pantry.

And we finished up the tile in the powder room. Fortunately the toilet cut-out just happened to be at the convergence of 3 tiles. I love it when things work out like that!

DH also did some wall repair and sanding so it'll be ready to paint tomorrow.

I know, it's about as exciting to see still more photos of Ditra and tile as it is to post them. But paint and grout are coming soon....

Alright...we've finally got a full powder room floor! I grouted, and in between cleanings I primed the walls with an oil-based primer strong enough to cover residual wallpaper glue and strong enough to just about asphyxiate both of us. I had to paint the room in shifts just to clean out my lungs. Whoo-eee!

So we're inching closer to the finish line.

My DH worked on patching up the laundry room ceiling. He couldn't recess the drainpipe totally above ceiling and behind wall, so once we move the washer and dryer out, I'm going to build a cabinet to cover it up.

The small hole towards the corner is access to water valves for the master bath above, and the larger hole is a laundry chute. DH really wanted a laundry chute, even though we'll be relocating the appliances, so he painstakingly built this one. It originates inside his vanity upstairs.

I can't wait until tomorrow...a full day of both of us working. woo-hoo!

Today we were the painting maniacs. Or I was, mostly. My DH hates painting, so that's my job when we get to it, but my impatience makes me terrible at cutting in, so he does right by the ceiling and I do everything else. We started with the powder room, then did the pantry and mud room. They're two yellows off the same paint card, with the powder room the darker one. I like the lighter one, but on the powder room I was aiming for more "golden" than the "butter" it turned out, so I'm not sure if I like it. Hmmmm.

We're upgrading all the baseboards in the house, from the 3" builder grade to 5+-inchers, so DH painted them in the garage. I also painted the new door casings, as we're also upgrading everything from builder grade to fluted columns with rosettes.

And then we tiled. I thought we'd only get a big chunk of the laundry room done, but I managed to go down one side, then come back around the other in a "U" shape, so the main part, where the washer and dryer go, is done. So here's yet another picture of tile.

We finished up some edge tile around the mud room part too. What was I thinking on tile day 1 when I just did the whole tiles? It's so much easier to trowel the thinset for the whole area at the same time instead of piecing in the little edge stuff separately. Lesson learned there!

We're off to have a fun Saturday evening together (though we do have the obligatory stop by HD), and then we'll enjoy a day of rest tomorrow.

Yay, another full day off to work on remodeling! We finished up the last 20 square feet of tiling, and I'll do the final grout tomorrow. I put the baseboards in the laundry room part, and here's how it looks, before and after. The before doesn't show the floor, but it was the same gray berber carpet you see in other photos. How nice to finally have tile!

In addition to the tile, the walls are now a soft cheery yellow instead of grayish-off-white. The cupboards have been banished to the garage.

I decided the powder room paint wouldn't do, so I went paint shopping and bought a sample (Lowe's now sells 7-oz trial cans). I liked it much better, so I went back and bought a gallon, but when I put it on, it turned out it was a different color from the trial one (more butterscotch than pumpkin). Here's the confused wall with original bright yellow on the right, final color on the bottom and trial color on the top left. I actually liked the butterscotch more than the trial pumpkin, so we stuck with it.

I cut the baseboards and DH worked on installing the toilet and vanity, cutting the feet down on the back and trimming the baseboard around the edge of the vanity trim. (Thanks to those who helped out with ideas how to make that fit.) Here's how it now looks!

We're still waiting for the faucet to arrive (online purchase), so I'll post the final photos when we get it in.

We just need to finish up the last of the grout, install the casings, do a bunch of caulking and we're done!

Looks great! I know it'll be a relief when everything is finished - and what a huge change it will be!

Weedy Acres we had the same problem with our color choices for the PR. My DH was set on having Pumpkin in there. We must have tried 10 colors trying to get the right one. I wanted more of a gold. The problem with ours was that we have the Timber Frame and the posts seemed to almost disappear when we tried those colors so we ended up with a simple sand color. Not as eye-catching as your butterscotch. I like that in your PR. Great job, thanks so much for taking the time to share play by play.

This is just so darned inspiring. I am in awe of you - the talent and skill, the willingness to work hard, and the ability to work side-by-side with your DH to accomplsih a joint project. I understand very little of the technicalities of what you are doing, but I am mesmerized. :-)