Electrical, Plumbing and Framing Part 2 – One Room Challenge Week 5

In this week’s Electrical, Plumbing and Framing Part 2 – One Room Challenge Week 5 we delve further into all the work we are doing, giving this bathroom its well-deserved rebirth. Here we have a continuation of last week’s work which we are not quite done yet. Take a look at what we’ve done since then.

Plumbing

This is kind of a sore spot for us right now. We have not had the best of luck with the person we were going to outsource this work to. Let’s just leave it at that. But on the bright side, we have a tradesman buddy of ours who has been in the game for over 40 years dropping some knowledge on us and guiding and giving us advice. Due to this, we ended up DIY-ing the plumbing as well. We took out most of the subfloor to be able to access the plumbing and take out the old fixtures. If you follow us on IG (if you don’t, what are you waiting for?) you may have seen that we got a bit excited taking the pipes out and ended up damaging our dining area ceiling. Adding that to the ladies’ to-do list since we are in charge of drywall finishings.

• 

• 

• 

Moving on we are currently replacing our old plumbing fixtures with Pex pipes and buffing up our subfloor by sistering the joists. As we are going to do a recessed shower pan for our curbless shower. Also had to figure out where we needed our holes for the plumbing for our vanity. So we ended up doing a cut out of the back of our vanity just to be able to measure properly where pipes were going to go in.

Electrical

Continuing from last week Marian’s husband Ernesto started running the wiring for the sconces and outlets. We had a lot of measuring done just so that we could make sure we placed our vanity in the right spot. Based on that we measured where the mirrors were going to go (centered to the sink of the vanity).

Why is this important? Well before we could do our rough-in electric for the sconces we had to determine the location. Since we wanted symmetry and balance we wanted all 3 sconces between the mirrors to have the same distance between mirrors and vanity. After all, that was settled we proceeded to relocate our old light switch and will be adding an outlet in the middle of the vanity. Also added a new light switch on the little bump out on our south wall of the bathroom. Otherwise, there won’t be too much more to happening until finish electric.

Tip: When placing sconces on sides of mirrors they should 36″ – 40″ apart, or 4″ from the mirror. Generally sconces should be 60″ – 72″ from the floor.

Framing

We basically finished up framing but we ran into a little issue when we realized we could not put the shower niche into the wall that we were originally planning. When we opened up the wall we found that there was old water damage and that we need to replace the insulation with foam board. This meant we had to move the niche for the shower to the wall that actually has the plumbing fixtures and fittings. We decided to do a his and hers niche on either side of the wall faucet set. There’s never really a problem there is always a solution.

• 

• 

Also on the vanity wall decided on doing a DIY recessed medicine cabinet for added storage. Which is really just a niche inside the wall behind the mirrors. Would you like a tutorial post on this? If you do let us know in the comments below!

Drywall

Well, it is not quite time to drywall and put cement board up in the whole bathroom yet. But there are some walls that will not be affected by plumbing or electric. As such those are the walls we started pulling up so as to not waste time and, to keep the project moving along despite some of the things holding us up. We are mudding during the daytime while our husbands are working and while we only have a few kids in the house with us.

Tip: Never stop working. While you are waiting on something there is always something else you could be doing to keep the ball rolling!

Shopping

We continue to order some items and await the arrival of the coat hanger that will be more functional for us for our bath towels rather than a towel bar. Think about it if you would, if you’re a parent you know most likely it’s not just yourself and your partner using your bathroom. If you have kids or maybe even small dogs you might be giving multiple people baths in the master bathroom. A simple towel bar or two really just doesn’t cut it so we thought why not use a coat rack as it’s more efficient and space-saving. We also are expecting in the mail the light fixtures and the mirrors. Our accent rug came in as well. So we have that going lol.

Tip: Don’t be afraid to think out of the box when thinking up solutions for storage and functionality. Sometimes the object least expected can work out solving your problems.

That’s it for this week. We hope to be able to get a solid amount of work done over the weekend. Hopefully, we can then move to waterproofing and then tiling. Remember Rome wasn’t built in one day but we are hoping that this bathroom is done in 8 weeks. Please pray for us!

Now let’s go check out how the other talented creators in this One Room Challenge are doing this week 5. Wish us luck with the plumbing and tell us do you do your own plumbing? And let us know what you think about our progress in this week’s Electrical, Plumbing, and Framing part 2 of the one room challenge week 5.

Follow along on Instagram @made.in.casita and see behind the scenes and learn with us along the way as we take on this challenge along with our daily shenanigans!