Full Bathroom Reno: Electrical, Vanity, and Moving a Vent Pipe

As I mentioned in the last bathroom post, I didn't get detailed photos of all of the steps due to baby on the way. A lot of these steps were taken when I still was not feeling well, so my thought process was not on taking photos and documenting!

Once we decided to remove the mirrors, Jake asked his brother-in-law to help. His brother in law works in glass and mirrors, so he would be able to remove it much safer than we could. He came over and removed them pretty quickly, and we were left with a very ugly wall. I wish I had pictures of the wall at this point, but imagine it with huge 5 inch diameter glue spots and chunks of drywall missing. We also discovered that there used to be two medicine cabinets, one in the middle and one on the left side wall, as there were holes for them in the drywall.

At this point, the only option was to completely remove the existing drywall and replace it. It was just too damaged. On the bright side, this meant it would be a lot easier to install new electrical. I asked my dad to help with the electrical, since Jake nor I had done it before, and he was very experienced.

He came over and installed two new outlet boxes, quadrupling our number of outlets in the bathroom. We had just one single outlet with two plugs, and he had the brilliant idea of making each outlet four plugs, in addition to adding the new outlet box. I was so excited I was jumping around with glee! He also replaced our vent fan, which has never worked since we moved in. It worked, I suppose, but it made this horrendous noise when you turned it on, so we just never used it. He also updated the light switch and vent fan switch to more modern rocker switches. I have a difficult time saying what I was most excited about- probably all of it. I switched the vent fan on and off for days just to listen to the quiet hum. Also, now all of our outlets were a new, crisp, clean white, as opposed to the older almond color.

The next step was to convert the single vanity light into a double vanity light, which had it's own set of problems. As with all DIY projects, you never know what's lurking behind the walls. In this case, we had a vent pipe in the way.

 

In the photo above, the black vent pipe had already been moved. The issue was the vent pipe came straight down where the arrow points, instead of curving to the left. Jake and my dad managed to move the pipe over one stud, to allow for the vanity light to be centered.

 

The processed described in this post took a few different days to complete, but boy is it all worth it!