Anyone ever taken OUT a bathroom? (hardwood floors, how much, vinyl, drain)

[redpanda]

I know, it sounds bizarre. But my husband and I are considering buying a home that was once used as a boarding house and therefore has a few more or less useless 1/2 baths scattered about. (I say useless because they're too narrow to really use.) We're thinking we'd have a plumber cap off the water lines, demo inside, and either open up the walls to install doors or perhaps create storage closets of some sort.

Anyone ever do anything like that?

[Cosmic]

I've done jobs where we basically moved a bath, demo'd the old one, built a new one in a different location.

Doing what you want is not a big deal.

The one thing you do have to understand, is the general plumbing layout, scheme, plan for the overall house. I assume this one something pretty big in terms of size.

You want to understand the general design for the plumbing. Is it a tower type design where baths are over each other, back to back in some type of tower arrangement? Or are baths more or less distributed by some type of area? How old is the plumbing??? How much has it been hacked up in a prior life???

The danger is affecting some other working plumbing that you wish to keep. Many old plumbing systems have venting problems, never were designed all that well on day one. Walling off some area might have an affect on others you wish to keep in working condition. Water supply lines might have been run in a series fashion and back to a certain branch level is required to keep present useful baths in service. You can get into some baths that have been totally hacked up bad over the years. The only thing holding up some floors is hope. Expect surprises if you rip into any of them. Old drain systems never work as well as assumed

My own opinion is old plumbing is just not worth it. I believe in that rule of thumb, rip out all old plumbing and replace with something new at some stage of the game. For talking purposes, houses older than 50 years are generally due for major upgrades. This might be a good time to consider that. Especially if the old plumbing is cast iron of original design. Most of that today is defective design by a modern standard. Venting in some of it is more by accident than design.

Also I am not a big fan of old plumbing blanked off behind walls and then forgotten. Too often that approach proves to be problematic. Either from being damaged in the future or corrodes and gives nasty surprises at the exact wrong times. Nothing like an older house with modern totally upgraded utilities on all types. Your plans sound a bit to much like big league jury rigging for a guy like me. Do it right at some point. You sure will sleep better and cuss a lot less in the future. Adds considerable value to an older property.

[redpanda]

Thanks for your thoughts. The baths in question are only half baths, so there are no bathtubs involved. And the remaining 2.5 baths in the house that I plan to keep are all new. I think the home's last owner just either didn't know what to do with the wacky half baths or thought they should stay but didn't want to upgrade them.

I wouldn't want anything to be done improperly, I just don't want the baths to be baths any more. (Although I am considering remodeling around one to make a large master bath if the system allows for it). At least 2 of them are arranged in what you call a "tower scheme" (one on the second floor right over the one on the first floor), but the other is on its own.

It's really very strange, but I don't want that many super-narrow useless bathrooms and don't want to have to worry about leaks, etc. from older plumbing (I'd say they were put in maybe in the 50's or so?) that I don't even use, so I'd just as soon eliminate the situation entirely by taking those suckers out.

[redpanda]

Sorry, I totally forgot to include the point of my reply, which was to ask--how would you do it if not the capping off?

[ale79]

I once used this company Blanco's Pro Painting to gut out my kitchen then had to but new things back in and paint it. U SHOULD CALL THEM AND SPK TO ROBERT BLANCO AND THEY WILL WORK IT OUT WITH YOU.516.851.8455. They will give u a free estimate.

[redpanda]

Thanks, but I have a feeling that Massachusetts would be a bit of a haul for them.

[Cosmic]

If they are PVC, might just cut them back and cap them off close to the main trunk lines.

If old cast iron I would be looking at the condition a lot better. Lot of that old cast can fool you. You think it is solid nice condition. Lot of it might have pin hole leaks. See it a lot, brown stains down the pipes. Stuff will set in there and stink. Also many sections of cast iron were never cast right. They can have thin areas in the walls. I tend to want to replace it if the opportunity is right. Would try to better determine the runs in the walls. Old cast many times has punky areas, you think it will be difficult to break out, a few taps does the trick. Also don't like them rubber caps buried in walls, over the years they get brittle and crack, again another possible source for smells.

The same with copper lines. I would want to cut them back to as close to the main branches that are still in use. I'm not a big fan of abandoning old plumbing in walls. Either from an odor or leak point of view. Murphy's Laws always wants to bite you.

What are the lines made of, go from there????

[Coldjensens]

I have removed bathrooms in houses that I owned twice and I have helped friends/neighbors remove about a dozen bathrooms in several different homes that were former boarding houses. WE always tried to remove the bathrooms with as little damage as possible to the previously existing room. Sometimes, you cna remove the bathroom, patch the floor holrs, spackle the plaster and move into the room.

When you convert back from a boarding house, it is generally pretty easy to remove the bathrooms. When the boarding house is created, they usualy just slap the bathrooms in quickly and cheaply. Often they simply instal T pipe in existing water and sewer lines. The locate the bathrooms based on where they can avaiod substnatial new plumbing. In that case, you just remove the T and replace it with a straight pipe. Otherwise you can cap it. Sometimes you can disconnect the pipe upstream and just leave it there. Either way, it is no big deal. Where it can get messy, is when they have plumbing pipes int he walls that continue on to other bathrooms and you need to remove those walls. Even then, it is not hard, just takes a bit more thinking. It can be a problem if you need to remove a wall with plumbing in it that leads to a bathroom that you are keeping. That requires re-routing the plumbing pipes, which in turn requires that you open up a permanent wall.


Removing the added bathroom walls is usually very easy. Often they just stick in walls where they can, and do not remove or damage any of the lod molding, flooring, plaster etc. You just knock down the walls, pull out the nails and you have your room back.

Patching the floors where the holes for sewer lines was cut tends to be the most problematic step to restoriing the old condition. Removing flooring and/or wall tile can be a lot of work, especially when they glue tile or vinyl flooring directly to the old hardwood floors. That can be a nightmare to remove.

Another major problem that you might encounter is damage to the original house from leaking showers, toilets etc. We had an added bathroom in our current house that we removed. However the floor underneath the shower was completely rotted out, as was the floor joist beneath the floor. When we were done, we had a big hole in the floor where the bathroom used to be. Tying the big hole in the floor into the existing flooring, paneling, etc was impossible, so everything had to be removed and we had to completely re-do the entire room. That was unfortuante and expensive. (and still not complete).

[redpanda]

Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts and ideas. I have no idea what kind of pipes are used, and since we haven't actually decided to buy the house yet I'm pretty sure they'd object to me opening up the floorboards to find out. I would assume it's cast iron, though; given the age of the bathroom fixtures.

You hit the nail on the head--the bathrooms are completely just stuck in where they could. If they were useable I'd probably just leave them there, but they really just aren't. You're completely right that opening up the walls/floors could reveal a host of other damages, though. Sigh. Guess that's just part of the "joy" of older homes.

[Cosmic]

Your typical swamp draining exercise, so straight forward. Then like in the fairy tale, you find yourself up to the arse in alligators.

These things never go as planned. I've probably done like 50 houses in one way or the other. None ever went totally as planned. Lost track of the number of baths redone.

If they just slapped those baths in, you can bet there is a zillion surprises awaiting you behind the walls.

In the end, you get back to my major point. You plan on a complete make over of all the plumbing and hopefully all the other utilities as part of the game plan. In the longer view, only way to fly. Everything else is failure mode in action. I sure have learned the lessons the hard way in other folks houses. In my own, them damned out utilities are all coming out, no other debate is possible. Older houses can be a joy, if rehab'd properly.

All new utilities, complete energy envelope makeover, retain the period charm. Can be far better than most new houses, certainly more reliable, a type of class that is very difficult to duplicate. Pretty desirable in a resale in most cases.