Neighbors Quoted $12,000 So I Renovated Their Bathroom For FREE

In this neighborhood, I found the most outdated 90s bathroom you could ever imagine. But by the time we're done with it, it's going to have the glow up it deserves. I'm talking about demo all the way to the studs, build a completely beautiful shower. We're talking making it magazine-worthy. And the best part of all, we're doing it for somebody who's in need, and we're going to do it completely for free. So, we're over at our friends Danny and Kristen's house, and we've known them for 5-6 years. And they reached out saying that somebody quoted them 12 grand to redo their bathroom. Now, the problem with that is, first of all, it's a lot of money, but second of all, they have so many projects going on from backyard stuff to roof stuff to all this other stuff that I needed to lend them a hand and help them out. All right, we're at my neighbor's house. They recently reached out to me about a dungeon of a bathroom, and I haven't seen it yet. So, let's go see what they got going on. Hey guys, I'm finally here. >> Yeah, it's good to see you. Come in. >> So, this is Danny and Kristen. They recently reached out to me, told me they have this 90s bathroom that's a complete disaster, that looks like a dungeon. >> Yes. >> And a contractor reached out saying they quoted them $12,000 to transform it. Now, I couldn't sit back and let that happen, so today we're going to do something about it. Let's go see this bathroom. >> Come on in. >> Come in, guys. All right, what do we got here? >> This is the bathroom. Come on in. You go first. >> I feel claustrophobic >> I know you actually >> I feel like if I jump, I'm going to put a hole through this. So, most bathrooms have like a window, some lighting to come in here, and this just looks like >> Nothing. >> I have a secret to tell you. >> Yes. We've been here for 7 years now, and this is a guest room here, but now it is turned into my son's game room. >> Okay. >> Until he moves somewhere else, eventually this will come back to a guest room, so we want this to be a nice guest bathroom that you can basically use. >> Yeah, I heard you guys got backyard projects going on, you got roof issues that are going on, all this stuff. >> Um well, so I because there's no light, right? They don't have any exterior like natural light, I would like to lighten it up a little bit, kind of go that organic modern moody, a little bit of all of that together. I am a huge fan of walnut. I could do walnut all over my house. >> darker walnut, yeah? >> However, I feel like I like dark, I see. >> The cost of getting that is astronomical. >> It's expensive, but also it's darker than probably what this bathroom should be. >> So, yeah, I think some drop-down ceiling lights would create a cool moody light. Or maybe maybe the ceiling's a little kind of low, so maybe some sconces off the walls on the both sides, just kind of keep it on the dimmer side, but make it intentionally dim. >> Okay. >> Um one thing that I'm already seeing is adding a uh a uh can light over the shower that'll bring more light in. So, you have this light, you have that light. Um I would throw this as far away from my house as possible. >> I'm a big fan of like floating vanities, too. What do you think? >> I love that. I was to always said I wanted a double vanity, but then I decided it probably didn't make sense. But, what we do need is storage space, also. >> Perfect. >> linen space. So, even the floating vanity if it had underneath it like the you know, the space to put towels and stuff like that. >> Perfect. Give me 2 weeks, and I'll promise you you're not going to recognize this when we're done. >> I love it. >> Awesome. Let's get started. >> Thank you. >> Carlos brought this to my attention, but we haven't had a good demo day in a while. So, folks, get locked and loaded. Ah, stretch your back, stretch your hamstrings, cuz today is demo day. Let's get started. That came off a little too easy. Just dawned on me, this is not oak. This looks like it's maple or birch. Um it's not the greatest color, but it's not oak, which is great. Uh we could possibly sand this and restain it a really cool color and modify the back, so we'll probably be able to mount this thing um floating. Which means money well saved. Ah, I just realized this vanity is in two pieces, this piece and that piece. Without this piece, that's too small, and with this piece, we won't be able to hang it. Okay, well, this is going in the dump. We tried. That's all we can say. We tried to save money. That's not supposed to come off like that. Start a YouTube channel, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Next thing you know, you're scraping wax off the toilet drain. DIY can be sexy, see? They don't show you the sexy side of DIY. Okay, that's how you turn it off, I guess. When it comes to demoing the shower inserts is you There's like a 1-in tab going completely around the perimeter, and those are secured straight into the studs, and then the drywall overlaps. So, what we're going to have to do is cut out that channel 1-in strip with our multi-oscillating tool, take the screws out, and this tub should come out, but we're still going to slice and dice it cuz it's way too big. Ah, good thing I got my 1000 Milwaukee shop saves on. Now I just need a face helmet. Oh, no bleed. No blood. We're good. Guy, you always keep telling me to get a helmet. But what about for my face? Maybe like a football helmet? >> Well, I mean, even the helmets with the things or like stops. >> I'm not wearing a helmet. People already think I'm slow in the head. What do you think a helmet's going to do? >> This linoleum's coming off like a nice easy rug, dude. This is probably the easiest demo I've ever done to date. It's been like an hour. >> That's funny cuz I thought those were tiles. >> You thought those were tiles? Either this is good imitation or a lot of this dust debris is getting to your head. Ooh, that was probably my favorite demo. Went a lot quicker than I expected. There's a lot of things and I don't know where to start first. Do we go to the shower first? Do we go to the vanity first? Maybe the board and batten walls? I don't know. All I know is I need to go dump this dump trailer all the full of stuff. I need to go get my work trailer to get all my tools here and then tomorrow's a brand new day. We'll get a good night's sleep and then we'll see what this bathroom wants of us. See you in the morning. Okay, stage two is today. We're doing plumbing and electrical today. So, what we're doing is we're getting rid of that light, putting two sconces down here. This is going to get moved about 12 in to the side. Our vanity is going to end there and then on top of it, we're going to need to put a light here to illuminate cuz it's super dark. Uh, we have a can light for that and then on top of it, tomorrow we got to get all this ready to move the mixing valve here cuz that's showing up today. Lots of fun things happening today. So, why waste time? And let's get into it. If you don't know anything about plumbing, let me give you a little something to kind of think about. Uh okay, so we're going to move this over. We're going to get these These are already stubbed out here. So, when it comes to putting on the little faucet that's in here, um we can compress it on. So, we just get these 1/2-in PEX ring fittings, slide this on, get my ring in there. Ah, let's get that ring in there first. All right, ring in there, slide this on, get about a an 8th of an inch reveal right over there. Then grab your PEX tool. Clearly, this was in a bucket full of water, so it's already rusted, but we're still looking good. Get that over there right in the slot. And then press it till it stops. And now we have a water-tight fitting. That ain't going nowhere, and it's code-compliant. Rest easy, my friends. If you want little bit more tips, here's another one. If you want to let's say extend your outlets, put one somewhere else, but you don't want to deal with like fixing a bunch of drywall work. I get it. Here's an easier way. Go to the bottom and cut out like a 2 and 1/2 to 3-in little gap as low as possible. Remove your baseboards if you need to. Get it to where your stud is here. This gap will allow for you to drill through any studs that are in the way, and then all you have to do is create punch hole out. is to start feeding your line. And then just feed it all the way down. Run it all the way around the edge. Drill through your studs like you need to. Feed it through. And then just simply put the last remaining pieces of drywall back on. And cover it with your baseboards. So then at that point, you just need to touch up your baseboards and not touch your drywall to fix anything at all. And by the way, on the private community, the builder's lodge, I have a 101 workshop that I made specifically for you guys where I take all the electrical stuff and I simplified it into one video. You guys can tackle on any kind of renovation project yourself. Go check it out. You might be wondering what I'm doing with this outlet. This is the light power outlet that's going to power the underglow lights because our vanity is going to be flowing. We'll be able to hook it in, plug it in, and not worry about a damn thing. And that all rhymes. Well, that's great news. So, we have an HVAC vent or channel ducting coming through here, which is great. Not loving that at all, but instead of using traditional cans, I'm using an LED one. Nice flat pancake. It should give us just the right amount. Cool thing with this is you can select your own colors. You don't need a housing. And the only business that we have left going here is try to drag a line, power line from there to these lines. That way when you flip a switch, it all comes on. So, maybe I could clean this. All right, enough is enough. We're just going to get the damn thing done. This is all going to be drywall anyway, or tile anyway, so might as well rip into it. Go yippee ki-yay. I don't know why I'm using this. I don't even need it. All right. Oui oui. See you in the play. So, the big issue here is I have this ducting running all the way through, then I have another ducting here, and then there's a false wall up there for like a fire hazard. Well, by golly, we found a way. Ooh, that's pretty. Let's get this connected, get some temporary lights, and I need to flip the damn switch cuz I want to see this lighting. Okay, progress report. Got temporary light there. I need to replace this housing, perfectly mounted sconce. Got an outlet down below for our underground LED lights. Everything else is closed off here. Got ourselves a brand new light for the shower. And this thing has adjustments for color grading. So, if you want a cooler or warmer, you could totally do that. Got light here. Got to replace this. I'm going to mud this up real quick. Next up is we're going to start doing our shower. That is going to be a doozy, folks. So, buckle up. It is day three, you beautiful people. Let's get this morning started. We're going to get in the shower here today. Here's the mission today. We're going to chop this monstrosity out of here. We're going to try to redirect all of our lines through here while managing and manipulating all this stupid HVAC stuff. This is why I hate tri-levels and basements, but that's for another video. And then we're going to puncture here, pop it out here. Here's my mixing valve. The old Amazon special. Got a new plate here, I mounted here, and we're going to go from this poly pipe down to PEX. In fact, this might actually be PEX. It's white. Usually poly is gray, so yay, I guess. Let's get to work. Nothing to see here. No matter how long you let these pipes drain, there are always going to be water coming out considering there's like what, 1,000 mi of water lines probably running through your house? So, the order of operation here. We're using red and blue PEX pipe. We're going to use these half-inch crimp rings to slide on and then these extenders. This is just a regular coupling. This is a 90° that we're going to plug in and then we can use our plumbing PEX clamping tool here or we can use the manual one. It's going to be dealer's choice today, but once we get it all transitioned over to the side, it'll be all straightforward. Here's a piece of advice. Don't ever ever ever use Teflon tape on plumbing. You can, they say to do it, but it just sucks. It absolutely sucks. It's so thin, it's so thinny-key. The amount that you have to put on for it to actually work is terrible. Instead, use Megatape. This is the gray stuff. You'll see it at any hardware store. It's thicker. It's for gas and water. And dude, let me tell you this, it rocks. I have I feel actually good sleeping at night knowing that I use that stuff. I've used Teflon before and I didn't put like the right amount like that a thousand and one layers or whatnot. And uh yeah, I had to fix leaks in faucets that were inside drywall. So, don't do that. Use gray. And even better, solder it if you can. The faucets in my master bathroom, I noticed from the outside cuz it's an exterior wall, it was leaking and uh I had to like yeah, rip open the drywall and >> I I think we broke something. I heard a crack. Oh, it just slipped. Oh, good. All right, we're back in business. All right, so what it the head of this just slipped off of the mixing valve. I was like, "Please don't tell me we cracked this mixing valve." But no, we're good. Last order of business, put our teardrop or ear drop. That's the part where you screw in the you know, the the thing that spits on your head. And then we'll secure this in place, put a line to it. >> Right it up. Right it up. >> You know, I just realized today is showers are really intimidating to build, right? Especially cuz they scare you with like waterproofing and make sure it's done right and tile is straight and all this stuff. And yeah, that's true. It's very important. Make sure you get all these basics down so you don't have to rip everything out and fix it afterwards. But, we live in the greatest time to ever be alive. The knowledge is free. Like, you don't have to go talk to like a 30-year craftsman or plumber for the union. Google it. Chat GPT it. YouTube it. You're already doing it. And then on top of it, today's supplies like PEX, you're not having to learn how to solder. You got all this stuff that's meant to make your life easier. And to do this stuff, it's more approachable. Like, from the waterproofing system back in the day where you had to pack your own mortar down to create the slopes, nowadays they have prefabricated stuff like the Schluter system we're going to use. So, get out, go build, believe in yourself, and it's your house. So, if you screw up, you can fix it. You don't have to worry about like Better Business Bureau and bad reviews. Go do it. on us. Okay, it's off right now. >> It's leaking. >> It's leaking? Where? >> No, I was kidding. >> Kyle, we need to have a company meeting about stuff such as humor. But, the water is on, everything is looking good, everything is dry. I want to make sure these couplings I don't like that we're coming from this. We're looking I'm going to say it. We did a damn good job. Think about the money that we already saved by doing it ourselves. What a great day. Okay, everything is in. I'm going to throw in the last of the insulation in here. By the way, you need insulation in your showers. It's an efficiency thing, right? If it's cold in here because the garage is over there, exterior wall, your shower is going to take a while to warm up. So, it's like a comfort thing. Good, good, good, good. Let's install our waterproofing. And we're going to skip some steps for the better this time. All right, folks. Even when your home was built brand new, however many years back, these stuff still happens. For example, this 14 two cable that looks like it's powering outlets in that guest room, and uh that's not how electrical is supposed to be ran. It's supposed to be ran like that, not like that. I don't even know how this passed code. This is not a thing. So, what we're going to have to do is notch this, notch this, push that in, and then put like a metal plate over it. That way no screws go in, and this will be tucked away away from the water. So, here's the problem when it comes to putting everything back. There is a ton of steps, and those steps include drying times over days. So, in order to work fast and efficient, here's what we're doing. Schluter system. Now, I was already going to use a Schluter membrane, Kerdi membrane, I don't remember the names, but essentially you put your green mold-resistant drywall on, seam the tape the the the seams or you joint the seams. I'm probably like low on blood sugar. I haven't eaten lunch yet. And then, after that, put my membrane on with mortar and then it's just it's it's a while. And for an extra 100 bucks on top of that, we can just install this Schluter Kerdi board. And here's the idea behind it. It's half-inch thickness like your drywall already is. It's already has the membrane on it and it's foam sides, so we don't need to put drywall on. So, this is going to save us a bunch of steps that if we wanted to, if we wanted to, tomorrow we could start tiling. But, we don't want to quite yet. There's a things to still do. But, when you do install it, oh, of course that happened. Conveniently where this is located, there's the mounting hardware and I'm surprised they don't have a unique name for this, but it's uh these little caps and um the screws. And what they do is these uh this washer presses into this the foam and then because it's wide, it pushes and holds it into the studs, so it doesn't rip out through just, you know, a regular old screw. Science. Got to love it. Almost forgot, we got a niche or niche niche, whatever you guys want to call it, we have it. And I love it. Of all the videos of our bathroom I've ever made, I always look for the people who go like you should have put a niche in there. Well, I am. So, uh very traditional, they sell in the same aisle. We're going to mount it probably like right there where this used to be. And uh we'll be able to have shampoos, conditioners, razor blades, whatever we need. And the cool thing with this is the way it installs is we do this. Super on the fly. Shove it in there. Secure with our screws and this Schluter board exact same thickness. It's going to look flawless, maybe gorgeous. Onward and forward. Welcome back to day four of transforming this bathroom. Now, today should be the wrap-up of all of our waterproofing. Walls are up. Turns out you got to space these out a little bit tighter, which I did. And right now we're going to start working on installing this drainage. This is super critical. If you're ever going to spend any money on the Schluter system, this is where the bread and butter is. It's already a designated slope in it. So, that means wherever the water trickles, no matter if it's the back or the front of the drain, it is all going to come inside. And that and the waterproofing is what you're paying money for. Simplicity, peace of mind. Drop down some mortar, put our Look at this. Curb down. Start waterproofing all of these joints, seams and all together so that overnight we could have our uh leak test done. And then hopefully tomorrow, fingers crossed, we start tiling. >> This is why I love this system so much. They just dumb it all down for you without skipping any steps. Pans in, slopes in, drain in, slopes in, watertight, curb in, flat, perfect, plumb. And then they give you all these cool little corners. So, what does it mean? We use this uh well, Kerdi membrane or…