Downstairs Bathroom - Day #2
Yesterday we decided to trek out to Bluffton for some lunch, to get some stuff from walmart (Sabs made cupcakes!), and I decided to stop in at Lowes' and get the things necessary for the floor of the bathroom.
So this morning Entrecard was acting up so I thought "bah, I'll just work on the bathroom". I tore up all the rotten flooring, which I smashed through effortlessly with a sledgehammer - the three adjacent layers of linoleum put up the most resistance. We put down some new plywood flooring, cut the holes for the toilet flange and the floor drain, and then started on plumbing.
The plumbing took far longer than expected. It was the first time in about 2 years I'd crawled around in that particular part of the crawlspace, and now I remembered why I'd been putting off this stuff. Dead spiders everywhere (we bug-bomb the basement every couple of months to keep things down there dead), and enough cob webs I probably could have stuffed a pillow with what I'd gathered up on a stick.
After several hours with Sabs helping me though, I managed to get it all hooked up and the 4" pipe graded all the right way (which was tricky because it had to make a U-turn around part of the foundation to reach the drain). The reason the original bathroom failed was that the three-inch pipe was graded backwards and so the water backed up and froze in winter.
Larry (Sabriena's grandfather) can't make it up the stairs when he's got to go, so we needed a bathroom for him downstairs, so I got a wax ring and just sat the old toilet on the floor. It's a disgusting mess, I tried cleaning it but I don't think that scum is going to come off. If I had a pressure washer I would have just taken the thing outside and sprayed it, but alas I don't.
Our plan is to buy a new elongated bowl toilet for upstairs, and bring that toilet downstairs. Then eventually, we'll buy an elongated bowl raised toilet for Larry to use.
The linoleum's glued and rolled, but I let it go up the walls a little bit because I'm really not sure what to do with it. My plan is to make it easier for Larry to bathe (at the moment he has to trek upstairs with assistance, and step over the tub into the shower up there) by just having a shower stall with a drain in the floor. The floor is graded to the back left corner, where there's a drain (which isn't shown, it's hidden by an extra sheet of plywood). I'm going to hook up a shower fixture on the wall and just suspend a shower curtain around that corner.
I'm not sure if I can put linoleum on the wall or not (heck, I'm not even sure if I want to, I think it'll look tacky) or I might just tile the wall with the cement sheeting over the linoleum, then grout or caulk it to the floor to make the entire room waterproof to the drain. I also have to do under the sink too. All we really needed at the moment was a toilet though, and that's what we have. 
BTW, I'm participating in Alpha Heroes' bloghopping challenge ... I have to visit and comment on ten new blogs (to me) and then talk about them on my blog. You're one of my ten!
it was a terrible amount of work, especially crawling around in the basement and crawlspace (the basement does not have the same floor area as the rest of the house, it's surrounded by crawlspaces). i am only just small enough to get to the area underneath the laundry, and i actually can't fit into the area underneath the bathroom so I have to reach through the hole to make the connections.
i almost didn't drop cards yesterday i was so tired, and i don't plan on doing much today haha.