Kermitt Turns 100

After only about 10 months, this post is now my 100th entry onto Kermitt. Part of me thought I would lose interest and quit after about 2 weeks, but here I am still keeping a semi-regular posting frequency after almost a year. Harvest is just now starting, so my posting is bound to become much more sporadic over the next 6 weeks. That being said, I thought I would take this opportunity to show off my post-harvest/early winter project.

If any of you have ever visited our house and experienced either of the bathrooms, you will agree that they both need some serious updates. It's bathrooms like ours that keep HGTV on the air. Anyway, we saved most of my overtime money from this summer and we've decided to tackle the upstairs bathroom remodel/expansion after harvest is over. If you've never seen our upstairs bathroom, it's basically a short narrow hallway with a bathtub across the end of it. Your knees literally touch the opposite wall when you sit on the throne. And the decorating? Let's just say that 1965 called and they want their wallpaper back. Take a gander...

Yeah, she's a beauty all right. Luckily for us, directly behind the tub is another empty room that is completely un-accessible except for a small 1.5' x 3' door in our bedroom closet. Here's what we're looking at.

The L-shaped spot where "existing bath" sits is actually where the tub is in the first picture. The stairs climb from north to south, so the portion exposed in this space is actually the sloping ceiling above them. The small break in the SE wall is the access hole in our closet. There's also a full size window labeled in the north wall. The roof line is a standard A-frame with the peak running north-south down the center of the room. The pink area represents the area that is roughly 6.5' tall or more, or the usable portion of the room as far as I'm concerned. It's roughly 7' wide by 10.5' long. Here's a picture looking north from the closet access hole.

Here's a shot looking south from the window.

The tub is on the other side of that corner and you can see the stairs to the left of that. Notice the old chimney right in the middle of everything. Luckily I had my thinking cap on when I had the roof replaced about 5 years ago. I had my contractor vent everything that was using the chimney out the side of the house and knock both of my decrepit chimneys down to below the roof line. The chimney will be right in the middle of the new room, so now I just have to remove some more bricks down to below the floor and cover it up.

So here's the master plan... totally gut the old bathroom and turn it into a hallway leading into the new bathroom. We are wanting it to look something like this.

It may look like we're not using all available space in there, but remember that the roof line restricts headroom in more than half of the room. We're planning on knocking out the wall behind the existing tub, creating access to the space. The new toilet will sit where the existing tub is. The tub/shower had to sit as close to the middle of the room as possible to maximize head room and avoid having to stoop while showering. The opposite wall will be really long so we're opting for a long 5' or 6' vanity with 2 sinks. We've kept all the fixtures close together to minimize our plumbing needs. The closets will have to conform to the roof line, making the floors of them deeper than the upper shelves will be. Both closets will have access doors into the unfinished portions behind them, making more "attic" storage. In fact, the east closet access door will make a secret passage linking up with the access door in our closet. I always wanted a house with a secret passage!

I've been constantly reworking the plans for this room in my mind for weeks. With the help of a buddy at work (thanks J!), I've got a pretty good idea of what's going to have to happen and what materials I'm going to need. Here's the first job...

This is a shot above the stairs. You can see the tiny access door in the lower left corner. The first project is to make sense of this rat's nest of wires. This panel is actually an old fuse box. I'm going to replace it with a breaker box and re-route any wiring that will be in the way of the new room. I'm also going to put sheeting down over the stairs to make access into the rest of the attic easier. Hopefully in "phase 1" we can fix stuff like this...
I believe this decrepit splice is part of the main service wire that feeds the whole house. Yeah, needs a little work. So there's the master plan for now. Like I said, this project won't start until after harvest. We've already started buying some materials as they go on sale. I imagine I won't be able to use my garage after a month of stocking up. We're looking at a budget of $3000 to $5000. We will get nice stuff to put in there, but our primary focus is resale value. We'll get stuff that is reasonably priced and would look good to potential buyers. My goal is to have the whole project finished by the end of the year. That may be a bit ambitious, but having to go downstairs to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night should keep me motivated. I'll keep you updated on our progress once construction starts.