The Saga of the Wood Paneled Shower - Part II

In The Saga of the Wood Paneled Shower - Part I, out came the paneling in the shower, the walls, etc. Now, the downstairs bathroom is fully gutted minus the sink. That means the tub, mold, walls behind the shower, fixtures, door, hardwood floors, everything. Here's how it went down.

First, the mold remediators came in. They taped and plastic’d everything up and sprayed, vacuumed and sealed all of the mold into submission, ensuring it won’t return. I can’t say enough good things about their work, even if it did cost me $1000!

I got back to work once it was clear and I called in a contractor to hang the cement board and greenboard in the bathroom since the walls weren't plumb. Cement board goes behind things like shower enclosures and is “superior mold protection.” The greenboard (pretty much treated drywall) goes above the shower enclosure and is mold resistant. While I can’t say that I love the work the contractor did, the good part is that I then had insulated exterior walls and we managed to save the plaster in the rest of the room so I can just paint it.

Once the walls were up, my sister and I also worked on pulling the rather un-level hardwood floor out in the hopes that I can use some of the ¾ inch spruce or hard longboard pine to patch some of the floors in the rest of the house. They really don’t have hardwood like that anymore – it took over an hour and several specialized blades in an oscillating saw to get the remnants out flush to the wall. There was smoke in the air from how hard the boards were on the saw blades.

My dad mudded, taped and sanded down the seams (see my last post for more about how he’s a magician with those supplies), and managed to get us a surface we could lay tile on that would actually stick.

After that was all finished up, Laura and I waterproof membrane’d the heck out of those walls using a product called RedGard. You brush it on hot Barbie pink, it dries to a bright red and it blocks water. Have I mentioned that I never want to see a hint of mold in my house again?

So, that was the extended demo of the bathroom all the way down to the studs and the subfloor. Up next – the rebuild!

The Saga of the Wood Paneled Shower - Part I

I love Rehab Addict, the show on DIY Network (and Thursday nights on HGTV) that details Designer/Real Estate Agent/Restoration Expert Nicole Curtis’s journeys through restoring houses like mine to what they once were.  


To get to the good parts though, you’ve got to get through the rougher ones. In my case, that means demoing the vast majority of a bathroom. It turns out that isn’t nearly as fun or therapeutic as it looks on TV.


Let’s start with how this bathroom started when I bought the Isthmus House.

In my opinion, the worst of it was the wood paneling in the shower… and on the walls… and on the makeshift wall and “seat” between the shower and the toilet. And no exhaust fan. Did I mention that among all that wood there was also a window in the shower? Or that the 60s ceiling tiles (please, don’t be asbestos), trim and grass cloth wallpaper were still intact?

This is how it looked when I started. You can see a bit of the paneling under the window on the left.

I started by trying to pry off the paneling from inside the shower because I assumed there was mold immediately behind it. Turns out, the wood paneling was new and had been recently nailed and glued down. To get the paneling off, I had to chisel between the panels to get a claw-hold before prying.

After prying off the paneling, I was pleasantly surprised that there was new cement board underneath and no apparent signs of mold or mildew despite it being obvious no one had even tried to waterproof. Reread my “before” paragraph above and you’ll understand my surprise. Feeling relieved, I took down some plaster above the window to see if any moisture had gotten around the edges and into the walls.

Here’s a pic of the newly exposed lath by the window in the shower. You can see the edges of the new cement board underneath as well as some of the paneling. Both were silicone'd in. 

I had to go on a business trip the next day so I let it go for a week or so while I worked on some other things around the house before digging back in.

This past Sunday, when The Roommate was gone for a bit, I decided that the rest of the bathroom should come down and out while I could make plenty of noise. Back on went the respirator, safety glasses and gloves and out came the plastic to protect the rest of the room along with my claw, hammer and screwdriver.

I got through some more plaster and taking down the towel racks when I realized that the pieces of paneling I was removing along the wall adjacent to the shower were coming out awfully easily and seemed kind of soft. If you just said “oh, no,” you guessed it. Water had been seeping from the edge of the tub into the wall and wicking along the drywall that had been installed creating mold and plenty of it.

Since I was wearing a mold-grade respirator and was well-protected (and The Roommate wasn’t coming home for a while), I kept pulling. And pulling and pulling. There was mold under the drywall and that brand new cement board and well embedded in the wall and lath. It went all the way into the beams and through the wall to the lath on the kitchen side.

After assessing the damage and coming to the conclusion that this had seemingly been covered up by whoever had done the work, I called a local company and asked them to come out for a consultation for remediation services before I could leave on yet another business trip. While they made it out for the consult, I learned that the middle of June is the busiest time of year for them so I’ll be waiting until next week for them to come out to take care of this mess to the tune of a cool thousand bucks. For reference purposes, that’s about equal to the entire tile budget that includes a marble basket weave floor.

I figure there are a couple of lessons learned here and a couple of reminders worth noting.

1.   It is not okay for anyone to cover up things that can affect a future resident’s health. This includes black mold and potential structural damage.

2.   If at first you don’t see mold when you expect it, keep looking until all potentially affected surfaces are checked.

3.   It doesn’t matter if building code says you don’t need an exhaust fan in the bathroom because there’s a window. No one opens a bathroom window after a shower in January in Wisconsin. Install an exhaust fan – and don’t vent it to your attic.

4.   Your contingency fund matters. I put aside a little more than 20% contingency in the budget for this bathroom for when issues came up. They did and I’m glad to have “planned” for the just-in-case.
5.   You never know exactly what's behind your walls until you open them. I found this little surprise! Looks like the workers might have left it in the 40s or so!

This is the part where the road bumps happen but we get through them so that y’all can see my new bathroom within the next few weeks. More on the saga of the soon-to-be-clean bathroom to come!