Bathroom Walls

Date: Mid September, 2025 to January 20, 2026

To capture all the activity on the bathroom walls I need the date range for this post to overlap with several of the previous posts. When we did the plumbing rough-in the problems with Austin's framing of these walls became clear. Here is what he left me with:

 

The first problem there is that the back wall (on left side of photo above) lines up with inside of the stairwell. But it needs to be 6" closer (to the camera) so that the walls create a tub/shower surround. The plans showed that:

 

Problem 2 was that against my advise he used a 2x6 support for the floor under the wall, which would be a good idea, except that it impinged on the code-required head room for the stairway. When Stacy came to fix the problem they changed it but they still didn't do it right, so that was a waste of time. Eric moved the rough-in plumbing floor penetration so that it gave more room for the stair headspace. 

So I broke out my sawzall and nail gun, took a day to tear out the back wall and the sill plate and framed it all again so that it fit the bath and was stronger. In this view looking up from the stairwell you can see the 2x6 is now about a foot down and that the plumbing and electric no longer runs straight up the 2x4 wall but instead is offset toward the drain pipe.

 

After the county inspected the rough-ins and framing, I started insulating the bathroom walls and ceiling, working in parallel with the siding work. Since I'm deferring the insulation of the main building, I insulated the bathroom interior walls along with the exterior using fiberglass batting. Not to harp on it, but the fiberglass insulation has really gone up in price! I think it was $130 for one bundle of the R-30 used for the ceiling. I'd guess I spent about $700 in materials to insulate one 10'x12' room! 

Got started hanging bats November 12:

 

 

A few days later I'd made some progress:

Above you can see how I framed the header across the stairwell to provide enough headroom, sandwiching the floor sheathing with 2x4's which extend all the way over the floor truss, so now the wall isn't just hanging over the stairwell. 

 

I dug the old dust encrusted halogen work light out of the lower barn and got it cleaned up and working.  

 

As I was working on the ceiling it became clear that the exhaust fan electrical connection had to be completed. Erik the electrician had run the wires up there, Vadim the HVAC guy had installed the fan box and vent, but the link between them hadn't been done by either one. So I carefully reviewed the wiring instructions and looked at the wires on the fan box. It because clear that the wires Erik had provided didn't correspond to what was expected. He had provided one switch on a 20AMP circuit for the heat, another switch on a different 15AMP circuit for the exhaust fan which was shared by a third switch for the light. However the fan box had one neutral wire shared between heater and exhaust fan and required that they both run on the same phase. The fan box also provided a wire for a night light switch. The solution was to run a fresh wire up there for the exhaust fan, increase the box size of the heater switch to accommodate the fan switch. Since the switches would be side by side it would be clear they shared a circuit and therefore were running on the same phase. The wire Eric had provided for the exhaust fan could then be repurposed for the night light.

So I broke out my electrician's assistant hat and made those changes and additions and connected all the wires at the fan box. Documented with plenty of photos of course.

 

 

 

I covered the back wall with leftover Tyvek so there wouldn't be fiberglass exposed toward the main room. I'd finished by the evening of November 19 and took this walk-through video:

Yes, that's fiberglass the camera is catching in the air. I called for the insulation inspection on November 20. Greg the inspector came out. First he asked me why I was asking for an insulation inspection when I hadn't had the framing and rough-in inspections done yet.  I explained that Gordon had come out for the rough-in inspection and that we had spoken on the phone after he had checked a couple things and he had okayed it. Evidentially he didn't write that in my file because Greg couldn't see it.  I told him what Gordon had said (see end of rough-in post for details). In short Gordon said the entire building would need to be insulated since it was "conditioned space," but I'd found some building codes about these uses having exemptions from the energy efficiency standards.  (Turns out those weren't residential codes so my "internet research" wasn't much better than your average conspiracy theorist but I didn't know that when I was talking to Greg.). Greg asked me if I was planning on leaving the rest of the space open (uninsulated). I said yes it was shop space and storage space.  So he said OK, the insulation I had there looked good and I could proceed with dry wall in the bathroom. And I saw him write it in the file.

A cycling friend Rich owns Appalachian Drywall so I invited him over for a latte and asked if he could take on the small job of this bathroom.  We had used Appalachian Drywall for the house work 18 years ago, but I didn't have a personal connection to Rich back then. We had a lovely visit over coffee after Thanksgiving weekend. He scoped out the task and said no problem. His bid price was very reasonable so we penciled in the work scheduled for Monday December 15. 

The 15th came and went, I sent Rich a text to say we traveling to Puerto Rico on Friday so they would need to come out before then. He said other jobs had problems, they'd be able to do Wednesday.  Wednesday came and went so we agreed to postpone the work until January since Rich was going to be out of town until after New Years day. Which means a week after that.

I was talking to son George about my planned floor tiles and he asked if I was installing a tile heating system. He shared how much they like the warm bathroom floor in their house.  I wasn't planning on it, I was only planning on having the heat in the overhead fan unit. But while I waiting for the drywall guys the idea grew on me so I started doing internet research on the subject. It's a pretty common feature these days. 

So I put in an order for the heating mat to Home Depot and got the installation instructions. It requires a thermostat controller that sits in the floor, and a thermostat on the wall, plus it needs an additional circuit to be wired. The prerequisite for drywall is to get the thermostat box and conduit in place because that will be buried in the wall. By January 7th I had that done. For the new circuit I just ran conduit down into the truss space where Erik can get to it. The two conduits on the left just go down to the floor plate so you can run the wires to the mat under the tiles:

 

All tucked in to the insulation:

 

Things got crowded when the drywall guys got there on Tuesday Jan 13. 

 

Wall builders Ryan & company said they would come in late that day,  but they didn't, so they had to sit around until the drywall was unloaded. I'm too old for this:

 I thought the stairwell would be to tight for that, so the way they could get around that corner was nice to see.

By three o'clock they were done with the hanging. This blue stuff is the water tolerant Sheetrock:

 

The change to the feel of the room was huge!

 

I had them do the wall outside the door so that I can hang the bathroom door in the finished surface:

 

The guys doing the hanging were subcontractors. Appalachian Drywall's finish guy is named Mike and he was supposed to come out the next day. That didn't happen. On Thursday the weather turned frigid and Rich let me know that Mike was having car trouble. I said that I would rustle up a space heater for him to use when he got there. I was thinking it would make his work more comfortable. I borrowed one from the art studio and cut a piece of Tyvek to cover the doorway. I turned it on around noon but no sign of Mike. So I shut it off when it was clear that he wasn't going to show.

Next day Mike gets there before 9AM. The temperature was in the high teens. When I went out to greet him he said that the room was too cold to work in. It wasn't a matter of comfort - it was that the drywall mud doesn't tolerate freezing - it actually needs to be warm in order to dry out so he could apply multiple coats. And avoid cracking. Duh. I was on the right track but for the wrong reason. Based on the previous day I said it should heat up in a half hour or so. Mike hung some plastic on the door and made a better seal than my Tyvek. 

After my half hour it was still below freezing in there. I pulled the second space heater from the studio and started it running on the same extension cord. I knew we could get better performance by having the second heater run off the other phase, so I widened my hole through the shop floor into the garage to run a parallel extension cord plugged into the other phase. And that did help.

 

Mike was thinking he might have to leave and come back when the room was warm, but it was finally starting to get above forty degrees in there so he just waited in his truck for a while then got the taping done.

Monday morning he was back to do the first of two mud coats.

 

 

He was able to interleave some work in Asheville then come back Monday afternoon for the second coat.  Tuesday he did the sanding which finished the job. 

 

 

 

Next up: paint and tiles on bath surround and floor.