Finishing An Unfinished Bathroom
This is what sold me on the unit—or at least the shower did. But the bathroom seemed unfinished: no medicine cabinet, no towel bars, no handrails, no exhaust fan, and no place for linens. One reason for no fan might be because there's no room over the ceiling for the ductwork, but nothing says I couldn't install the fan on a wall. At any rate, the lack of handrails was the biggest concern, so that became numero uno on the list.
I was surprised the prior owner didn't stick with the nice white shaker cabinets from the kitchen for the vanity, so I ordered a white cabinet to replace the black one, which doubled as a test unit to see if I liked the new cabinets. And since there was no medicine cabinet or towel rods, I took care of them at the same time. And finally, a linen closet was on the horizon since a tankless water heater was on my list from day one, and the existing water heater resided in a big, mostly-empty sealed off space that would make a perfect linen closet.
Meanwhile, I'd ordered a fancy, rather expensive glass shower door, but several days after the expected delivery date, it still hadn't arrived, so I inquired as to its whereabouts. Seems it was damaged in shipment, returned, and refunded, all without informing me. It didn't matter: in the interim, it had gone on sale; plus, I was granted an additional 10% discount for my "inconvenience." All good, as far as I'm concerned, since the detour saved me a couple hundred, and I wasn't in a rush anyway.
That said, when it did finally arrive on 21 November, I was not at all surprised the first one was broken, and indeed feared the second would be as well: the flimsy cardboard box was utterly demolished; it looked as if it was dragged behind the truck for the trip to my home. The delivery person had to unbox it outside, in the driveway, in order to carry it inside in pieces, as there wasn't enough left of the box to grab. Strangely, despite the sorry state of the packaging, the door was intact.
Installation was anything but straightforward. My problem: there was no stud behind the door channel part, and anchoring it to sheetrock would not do. So I cut out the sheetrock behind the channel (above left), sistered in a new wall stud, replaced the rock, and lag-bolted the channel to the new stud (above right).
The door, incidentally, helps hide a tiling mistake made by whoever tiled the place: the tile ended at the shower threshold on one end, but over three inches beyond it on the other—quite likely something only I would notice, but I'd be noticing it every time I took a shower, for the rest of my days. I solved the problem by building a new threshold for the door just beyond the edge of the shower pan; thus the door frame butts up against the tile on one end, and covers the excess on the other. As a bonus, it added three inches of elbow room to the shower interior—which may not sound like much, but it does make a difference when you're on the inside.
Other little cosmetic improvements I made: next to the toilet was an access panel, which consisted of a large, not-so-great-looking sheet of thick, textured plastic nailed to the wall (above left). Behind that large panel was a small, irregular hole about the size of a soup bowl. I replaced the nailed-on cover with an easily-removable access panel less than half the size (above right), so the stop valves behind it can be more easily reached. I also replaced the shower head and shower valve control handle with new ones stylistically more in keeping with the rest of the bathroom's modern brushed nickel hardware.
Installed on 14 December, the exhaust fan wound up on the wall over the toilet as expected (below left), since there was zero clearance between the ceiling and the roof rafters. As for how it would be vented, strangely enough the solution came by way of the old gas furnace. Originally I was going to thread a new exhaust vent through the laundry and out the wall; I was also going to remove and seal off the furnace roof vent. But then it dawned on me: the fan and the furnace vent were inches away from one another; why not use the old furnace vent for the bathroom fan? All it required was a reducer to connect the two (below right). It was one less hole to cut, as well as one less hole to plug. Win-win.
Another win was the control. The bathroom had two wall switches: one controlled the three main lights; the other, curiously, controlled just one light centered over the toilet. It was a rather odd arrangement that had me wondering if a fan was planned but aborted owing to the clearance issue. No matter; I simply rewired the light over the toilet to work with the rest of the lights, and ran its original wire over to the fan. And everyone went home happy.
Speaking of lights, on 23 December I finally added a light inside the shower, which was not very well lit. The light that I used was originally located in the dining room, quite close to the wall (highlighted below). It seemed to me to be a rather odd location for a light, and since the fixture was rated for wet locations, it was perfect for its new home.
Over nine months later, on the first of October 2023, I finally got around to working on the linen closet. The space is lined with Masonite pre-finished with glossy white enamel to make for a smooth, clean interior surface. Two wire shelves finished off the linen closet.
I hung the door on 4 October 2023. It was much easier to do than I'd expected: I did all of the modifications to the door and frame with hand tools. This allowed me to leave the door assembled and do the work inside, instead of having to lug the thing outside, disassemble it, chop it up, reassemble it, and lug it back inside—something to be said for old-school hand tools and woodworking techniques. The casing will have to wait for another day, as I must order shims to build it out from the wall.
Bathroom Bonuses
These are items that I'd not planned on at the outset, but that came into being along the way. First up is the backsplash. When I was out in the shed hunting down trim for the linen closet, I came across the tile left over from the kitchen backsplash. There was just enough for the bathroom—even including some of the green accent strip. It went up on 3 October 2023, and was grouted the next day.
Finally, I came across an ingenious accessory that would give me a handrail right where I needed one without having a handrail that was competing for the same space as the toilet paper holder.
One last "improvement" was purely aesthetic. When I came across this on Amazon, I immediately clicked "Buy Now."
