The only thing I hate about DIY projects is that in most cases, at least for us, the projects we actually complete are out of necessity not desire. For example, one Sunday morning last spring I noticed water pouring out of the basement ceiling after my daughters had taken their bath. Lovely. After cutting a few holes in the basement ceiling and pulling up the flooring in the upstairs bathroom we discovered two issues. One, the tub had a small crack in it that was leaking into the basement. Two, the caulking where the bathroom floor meets the tub was pretty much gone, thus causing any water that dripped down the front of the tub to end up directly on the basement ceiling.
(We also discovered that obviously my daughters splash WAY too much when they are taking baths)
So much to our dismay, we had a fun DIY project on our hands.
First we ripped up all the flooring in the upstairs bathroom.
As you can see from the picture, this leak had been an issue for a while.
So we had to replace the particle board underlayment as well.
For the flooring in the bathroom we bought some sheet vinyl from The Home Depot. It comes on giant rolls and they just cut off the length you need. It is super easy to work with. We laid out the vinyl flooring and triple measured the dimensions for the bathroom. Then we just cut it out with normal scissors. After we had the general shape of the room cut out, we dry fit it and measured and marked the hole for the toilet and then cut that out.
Now for the super cool part. A few years back we replaced the bathroom flooring in our old home. The linoleum flooring that we put down required this glue that was horrible to work with. This new vinyl flooring, because it is so flexible, allows you to use this adhesive tape. It is amazing. You lay the flooring down where you want it, then just lift up one side, and put the tape down around the edges, then an X across the middle of the floor. Then you lay the flooring on top and press it down. Boom. Done. It took my husband and I seriously like 5 minutes to install the flooring. LOVE that stuff. We have had the flooring in for 8 months now with no issues.
Here a picture of the final product! As annoying as it is to be forced into a DIY project,
I still love the final result.
Next time....part 2...the basement ceiling. :)
