Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
WWYD: Old house bath reno dilemma
Our house was built in 1929. We have a full bath on the 3rd floor that we are updating, but we don't use very much. We occasionally take a bath up there or one of us uses it if the other is in the main bath (we don't have a master).
Here's the dilemma. The floor is hardwood. The previous owners put peel and stick vinyl tile on top of the wood. I removed this a couple weeks ago. The floor is in reasonable condition, but there are a few stains. The other challenge is there is a claw foot tub that would have to be removed to refinish the floors. The pipes don't have shutoffs, so we'd have to shut off the main, unhook the tub & move it (it's super heavy), cap off the pipes and hope nothing goes wrong during this process. Let me remind you our house is from 1929, so I would be surprised if nothing went wrong during this, but it's possible.
What should we do?
Option 1: Refinish the floor.
Move the tub & take that risk. If we do this the stains might not come out & we'll have to continue to be careful about any water and/or leaks creating more damage.
Option 2: Paint the floor.
I fully expect people to be horrified at this decision, but we actually painted the floor of the bedroom on the same floor and I like it. This would require some sanding, but we could keep the tub in place and any stains would be covered by the paint. We'd have the issues with potential water damage to the wood.
Option 3: Forget the hardwood altogether and put something over it. But what? Tile? Cork? I think we can possibly do this without removing the tub. If we put hard tile I don't want a big gap between the under layer of floor we'd have to add (not sure what that's called) and tile at the threshold. I don't want vinyl.
Option 4: Another suggestion we haven't thought of?
BTW, if we refinish the floor we'll also do the hall and bedroom on the same floor as this floor is the only part of the house without refinished floors. Refinishing those areas is not contingent on the bathroom and could be done regardless.
What would you do?
Re: WWYD: Old house bath reno dilemma
My Pinterest
The Googlesites Paint Bio
Thinking of doing cosmetic updates to a dated home? These were our costs.
If the tub is never going to move, can you tape up the feet and refinish around them? I would think there might be in imperfections right around the feet, but it seems like it could be minimized with some extra attention (and cost if you aren't DIYing?) around the feet. If that's not possible, I also vote painting is OK (happy to hear you're keeping the clawfoot, I love my clawfoot so much!).
How far is the tub off the floor? Is there space for a palm sander to fit? Could you hand sand, palm sand under the tub?
If you keep wood, painted or not, I would have shut off valves installed while you are rehabbing.
Personally, I don't find painting hardwood that much of a sin. I wouldn't recommend it in most situations, but if you have a shabby chic style I like it (this coming from someone who makes her living doing historic rehabs-oh the horror!!!)
If this were my forever house and sanding with tub in place was not an option, I would remove the tub refinish or tile the floor and install shut off valves.
We could possibly get under there if we DIY, but if we refinish it will be professionally done and the refinisher told us the tub would have to come out. DH does not want to DIY refinish and since we'd do the other areas at the same time it's easier to have it professionally done.
If we paint we will DIY and should be able to get under the tub well enough to make it look presentable.
Good points about adding shut offs anyway. That's probably smart and something we should consider.
Tile would be ideal, no question. We were hoping to get away with a fairly cheap reno for this room and tile could change that. Might be worth it, though.
As for water, I'm more concerned about damage due to leaks than normal use. We honestly only take a bath up there maybe 10 times a year. The rest of the time it's just brushing our teeth or using the toilet and those things only happen a few times a week. It's just DH & me. No kids.
Ugh. I am so indecisive.
I love the hex and basket weave. DH will probably kill me if this becomes a much larger project than expected. He owes me, though, since he started a project last year that totally morphed.
Does anyone know about tiling over HW? I can't tile directly on top, can I? Something has to go down over the HW, right? Do you think that will create too much height difference between the bathroom floor and hall (HW) floor?
My suggestion;
*Remove the tub, take this opportunity to update plumbing with proper shut-off valves.
*Refinish the floors. Consider a dark stain to help hide stains on the floor.
Good Luck
Sadie the Dog
Our Kitchen & Bath Reno Blog
I agree with juno and many of the other pp. I would DIY stain the floor or hire someone who would be willing to give it a shot. Explain to them it doesn't have to be perfect. A skinny sander block and one of those mini rollers with stain is probably the best you could do.
Otherwise you can think completely outside of the box and try staining the floor and painting the area by the tub. I would try to stain the floor and see how it turns out if it looks bad you can always paint over just that area. It could be just that half of the room or something made to look like a painted rug around the tub. I'm imagining a white rectangle around the tub and a border around the "rug" that is a strip of unpainted stained floor and a strip of white. A fun little rug detail.
That's a great idea Fox!
Im personally not a fan of tile bathroom floors. I'm always cold and it makes me freezing! That's why we have cork under our claw foot.
We did take ours up and replaced all the plumbing (and the whole rotten floor). I don't remember why, but it was a pain to replumb.
My Blog - 86'n It
ITA
I am putting in a negative vote for small tile floor. We did it in our remodel and I regretted it from day 1. Way too hard to clean and nasty stuff sticks in every little grout line.
My Chart My Nest Bio
Planned Executed
I would stick with the wood, personally. I just love old wood floors (although I love old tile floors, too).
I also agree with all the PP's who said to install shut-offs regardless! So as long as you are removing the tub anyway, and having the hallway refinished anyway, I would go ahead and have the bath refinished, and you can always switch to tile later if you end up not liking it.