After the holidays, I knew no one would come to visit again until Memorial Day—not in large groups anyway. I seized the opportunity and attacked the downstairs bathroom. We cleared everything out, and removed the toilet.

I didn’t remember there ever being a shower in that room, but apparently there was. When I pulled up the remaining vinyl, I discovered a round patch in the slab at the very spot where a shower drain would have been.

revealed a capped off drain pipe. Sweet! I had an easy place to connect the new plumbing and I didn’t have to break out very much concrete for the line to the lavatory.

Six hours later the ditch was dug and ready to accept plumbing.

I rented a 60 lb jack hammer and started chipping out the patch. It came apart easily. Digging down a bit

The next morning I mixed two bags of concrete and patched the slab.

Then I started untangling the existing electrical wiring in preparation for the new layout. Well, the foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone. It didn’t take long to realize that it was time to take down the play room ceiling—a bit premature in relation to the renovation schedule for that room, but we had to expose the main wiring pathway between the breaker panel and the bathroom and stairway area.

Two weeks later, I had the waste and vent topped out, the water and electrical roughed in, and backing for the vanity and medicine cabinet installed in the lavatory wall.

Turning left, I roughed in the shower valve. Although I installed it from the bathroom side of the wall, I secured it to blocking from the stairway side. This will allow the valve to be replaced at some point in the future without destroying the shower enclosure.

Because there was no way to solder the top fittings, I had to notch the top plate and the adjacent joist, and then slide the piping in.

The next day I ran the overhead water piping and made the connections to the existing system.

In keeping with the goofy layout of this place, the lake side entry door opened into the southeast corner of the bathroom. There was only about a foot of space between the two. We planned to round off this corner as much as possible. I drew a full scale template and started the modification.

First I marked and cut the sheetrock away from the corner. Then I removed the studs. Using my template, I marked the sole and top plates. I made the initial 45° cuts with my circular saw and the 22.5° cuts with my reciprocating saw, incorporating my hand saw whenever the need to finesse the cuts arose. With my son’s help I installed two new studs which we set at angles to match the cuts. We then prepared the sheetrock, only cutting through the first side of the two “breaks” so that the whole assembly would remain rigid and solid. A few drywall screws later we had a multi-facetted corner and 18” of space—a big improvement.