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Alan Taylor
  • Wholesaler
  • Manassas, VA
32
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33
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DIY Plumbing for a Bathroom Remodel?

Alan Taylor
  • Wholesaler
  • Manassas, VA
Posted Sep 4 2019, 20:21

My wife and I bought our first house, as our primary residence, and have planned on doing much of the repair ourselves.  First order of business has been the bathrooms in the house.  Before we even moved in, I had to get the master bathroom shower working (the valve had become 'frozen' by mineral deposits from untreated well water -- neglect from the previous owner).  The bathroom is 'operable'... but we still plan to do a major remodel of it later. 

The second order of business is the 'guest bathroom'. The 'guest' bathroom is actually *larger* than the Master Bathroom at this point.  It has a shower/bath, and *had* a wall-to-wall vanity.  Our original (budget-conscious) plan was to just replace the flooring and bath (badly outdated), and move the vanity to open up a little more space  (the 'bump' out right by the tub used to contain the water-heater for the house). 

At this point, I've demo'd the bathroom, removed the tub/shower, taken out the wall that used to contain the 'water-heater closet', and taken most of the rest of the room down to the studs/subfloor.  (copper piping you see was from original plumbing, which apparently had burst when the house was left vacant over a winter, and was later replaced with PEX). 

As you can probably tell -- this 'guest' bathroom is back-to-back with our master bathroom, and the 'wet-wall' between them contains the connection to the 'main stack' directly below their shared wall.  

Our desire is to move that wall (and plumbing) 18 inches towards where the camera is, to allow a full bath/shower to fit in the master bathroom, and to make it a bit more roomy -- and to make the guest bathroom a little less awkwardly sized/proportioned, but still comfortable/cozy.  

I've got no problems replacing subfloor or framing in walls -- but plumbing is somewhat new to me, and I'm hoping there's a middle-way between completely hiring this out, and potentially screwing it up by trying to come up with my own plan and potentially causing plumbing/drainage problems (here, you can pull your own permit if you are the home-owner occupant).   I definitely want to make sure everything is up to code -- but also don't want to pay a mint to have this done, if I can reasonably contribute my own labor to it.  (before we moved in, we had one plumber quote us a price of $900 to get a bathtub drain fixed -- something a friend of ours and I later DIY-ed for $80 in parts, and 30 minutes of labor.) 

Are we crazy to think this is at least partially DIY-able?  Is it unreasonable to ask a plumber to give us a 'consult' for a few hundred dollars to help guide us through making our own plans, pulling our own permit, and doing our own work? 

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