Half Bath Install - Part 1

So, we are finally getting around to tackling our bathrooms. This house has a full bath we've been planning to redo since we moved in because it is rather gross, but we wanted to have a half bath in place first.  For a long while our half bath looked like this:

Yes, cute but no wall and no lights.  (Thank goodness for that window!)  Steve is the ultra handy member of our family so he made time to tackle this project this winter.  When the days are short and the temperatures are frigid we feel less inclined to be outdoors so this is a good time to tackle these less fun type projects. You can tell by our paint lines we had the idea for the wall location at the time of the bathroom install.  Steve marked the new wall lines and went to work.

He bought a fancy tool to help him cut out our trim boards super exactly.  Maybe he will pop on here and update this later to tell you the name of it.

This tool really did an amazing job.  The wall is now tucked in perfectly.

We have an odd sort of wall in this part of the house, which was added in the late 1940s.  It's some sort of composite between drywall and plaster; combine that with oddly spaced studs and you have a recipe for really annoying construction.  For example, to hang our large chalkboard in the hallway I think we drilled at least 20 holes to find studs to hang to.  Ugh!  So, on this project Steve took an alternative route and used toggle bolts.  They made for a much happier installer and a much faster install.

The wall's bones went up super fast with awesome Steve on task. He even figured out the headache of wiring in this part of the house so 1 - we have power and hence, light and 2 - we won't burn our house down with the old mess of circuits.

We both hate drywall and will use it when necessary (probably on the old bathroom redo), but found these wood planks for such a deal at some crazy big box sale a long while ago.

Here's the inside of the bathroom wall, yet to be finished.  The bathroom feels like a room now!

Steve plugs away on this project anytime he has.  He's wiring up some receptacles for us in this picture...

and is feeling pretty gosh darn good with the progress in this one.