Here is a bath I expanded and remodeled for a neighbor that trusted me with modifications of his home, even though I had less than 6 months experience with my new home remodel business.
Here is the new half of the bath, nearly finished, with the new fixtures still being installed.
The old bath was quite small, but there was a large, little-used room toward the front of the house that could be broken up to add to the existing bath, adding a tub and a heated wood floor, while retaining the character and decor of the original bath.
Exploratory surgery on the wall behind the vanity.
Careful demolition revealed a sewer vent line that needed to be moved to expand the bath.
Two layers of subfloor already existed, so we were able to pull up a portion of of it in the walkway to install a heat mat in a 3/4" thick pour of leveling concrete.
Note the furring strips used later for nailing the reclaimed maple flooring.
The sensor for the floor heat thermostat.
Pouring the concrete, using the furring strips as a depth gauge.
We got the high end programmable thermostat, but I would probably opt for the lesser model next time due to the slow temp change of the heater. It takes more than a few hours to raise the temp 10 degrees, so it's almost more efficient to just leave it on all of the time.
The heater takes about the same power as leaving a 100w light bulb on all the time.
Heater poured, cured and working.
I found some reclaimed maple flooring in good shape at Wasankari for half the price of new. It also worked better because it had virtually the same cut as the reclaimed flooring in the original bath.
And to answer your question, yes the heat wood floor worked wonderfully, providing a soft, gentle warmth to the whole room.
This bath is all corners!
I sanded the whole floor to get it all to the same level and to apply a consistent finish to both the old and new floor sections. That's a serious floor sander/grinder.
Here is the business end. And the pic shows the trick I use to make sure I sand all sections of the floor equally. Periodic pencil marks that must all be sanded away to prove I sanded everywhere.
Can't get into the corners with the big sander, so I had to use a corner sander, not shown.
Most of the woodwork was salvaged from demolition of the previous bath due to careful removal and storage, but expansion of the bath required additional trim to be cut and stained to match previous woodwork as well as possible. This required a bit of stain mixing. Here is the new trim.
The customer chose a natural, absorbent wall mud texture which required two applications. Cool stuff, and surprisingly useful to absorb bath moisture for gentle later release, alleviating mold problems.
Installing the new trim to match the old.
Here is the newly tiled shower, using subway tile, prior to grout. Note the notch cut out of the shower wall to admit more light into what used to be dark shower.
Grouted subway tile.
The customer chose to modify a purchased antique chest of drawers into a vanity with surface-mounted sinks.
The trick here is to make room for the sink plumbing while still allowing the use of the drawers. Here are the modified drawers with slots to avoid the fixed plumbing.
The customer also asked that the bathroom door be turned around to open into the bedroom rather than into the bath, allowing less conflicting use of space. It was a trick but we did it. Here also is the new vanity installed within.
Swapping the door frame.
Nan found this awesome recycled plastic with actual birch branches embedded for use as a splash guard and light source in the newly opened notch in the shower wall.
Here it is installed.
Reverse side.
The new part of the bath, with the old claw foot tub procured by the customer years ago, now installed. Awesome, comfortable soaker.
The original bath with the new vanity.
My plumber. He's awesome.
Anticlimactic shot of the tortured shower curtain rod necessary to deal with the new shower window.
