A Game of Inches

I told you that figuring everything out was taking a while. That is because optimizing two bathrooms means getting the most out of the space between them.

In the case of the boys bathroom my biggest concern is space in front of the loo. I purchased a compact elongated design because it will be much more comfortable than the old round one. But that also means that it takes a few more inches of floor space.

I decided that the right answer was to replace the 8" wall between the bathtub and the boys' bathroom with a 6" one. Most of that wall needed to be redone anyway to accommodate a slightly different placement of the medicine cabinet and to make alcoves in the girls' shower. Plus the placement of the original plumbing meant that the studs were so cut up that they were held up by the tile rather than the other way around.

I could reduce the wall to 6" by moving the vent stack 18" over so it would be between the boys' shower and the girls cabinets. I could "easily" do that because I am adding a 4" wall behind those cabinets to hold the girls medicine cabinets. The wall behind the show is now 12".

This was the wall.

 

After a few seconds with the reciprocating saw

I was a little surprised when the floor came up with the wall.  It turned out that several of the floor boards were not nailed to the joists.  They were held in place by the wall.  I decided that I really didn't want to continue dealing with them and I slapped down some plywood subfloor there, too.

New bathtub subfloor in place.

Notice that the boys' floor was already done.

Beginnings of the new wall in place.

You build this kind of wall one stick at a time.

In the picture above the square areas will be alcoves over the girls tub.  I thought it might be nice to have some new spots to precariously balance all the bottles.