Just as I was getting ready to put the house on the market. I kid you not, like 2 weeks before this was scheduled to go down. Now my grandbaby (DOB 06/05/2019) is there and I'm still stuck here. Anyway.

Floor plan:

Second time typing this up. Since Houzz doesn't let you open a new page when posting, hitting backspace when you THINK you are editing can have catastrophic consequences, and did for me. Here goes again:

This house is a single story ranch built in 1958 as officer housing (military) in the desert, on a slab. It is a stable sandy type of substrate. The above is a rough (but fairly accurate) drawing of the CENTER of the house, with 3 bedrooms lined up along the right side across the hall from the bathroom and all those closets, and the living room (a long narrow room) on the left side. The kitchen is tiny and originally had the hot water heater and W/D stuffed into a nook in the kitchen. The kitchen has a total of 9' of counter space, including the roughly 3' area taken up by the (original cast iron) sink. So - while I am not enjoying the consequences, I understand why former owners moved the W/D and water heater into the garage. That's a Rube Goldberg NIGHTMARE out there that no one in their right mind wants to touch but is not, according to the pros, going to blow up. The stuff out there is not according to code and was not when we bought the place but nevertheless passes inspection even for an FHA loan. Well, loan inspection at least. Anyway. Two plumbers, one electrician, and the general contractor who did the home inspection before the loan was approved all agree - not to code but not going to burn me up at night in my sleep, either.

Let me say right off the bat - I have NO INTENTION of doing this work myself. I just want to get some reasonable idea of how much I might be able to get done BEFORE I dump my dumb ideas on the poor plumber who will actually be doing the real work. Also, none of the interior walls in the drawing are STRUCTURAL. The house has timber rafters and cathedral (not vaulted) ceilings. No trusses, just good old fashioned beams made of dead 200 year old trees supporting the roof, all of which is supported by the exterior walls. Pros will be doing the actual work so they will do the right thing regardless of what I think, but these are the assumptions I am choosing to work with and I believe them to be reasonable assumptions.

The problem in the bathroom is that the tub faucet has been leaking behind the wall. This became obvious only when the wrong kind of caulk the former owner had used to hide this problem finally shrank up and separated enough for water to come pouring out from behind the wall, pushing out grains of dissolving mortar, when you turn on the tub faucet. I see no signs of water damage in any of the nearby walls - that is the linen closet, the furnace closet, and the weird room/closet that backs on the tub nook. So I am guessing that in addition to the leaky fixture, the original cast iron drain has at least partially rusted out so that much of that water leaking behind the wall still went down the drain (eventually). Otherwise, I just don't see how it could be leaking as seriously as it is without having caused immediately obvious damage to any of the nearby drywall. I guess we'll know for sure when everything comes down. I barely used that shower and its a good thing, it turns out (I have a gym membership and generally ended up showering there regularly, and I am the only occupant of the home).

Here is an example of the setup. This bathroom is almost EXACTLY like mine (I say "almost" because I don't have the actual measurements). The layout is the same, with the linen closet/tub nook on one side and the sink/toilet on the other. Same sides, too.

https://www.younghouselove.com/tackling-the-bathroom-chapter-two/

My place has different tile, but it is tiled just like that. Well, not in the running bond pattern and its all 6" tile in my bathroom, even on the floor. You can't get tile like that these days, with all the right trim pieces. Not affordably at least. Radius bullnose. Coving. Grout lines so thin they are nearly invisible. *sigh*

There is not hardieboard or similar behind the tile as noted on the drawing I posted. It's the original tile set in the original cement mortar bed that they troweled up by hand. It is that hand troweled mortar bed that is crumbling and washing out between the rim of the tub and the tile. The tile itself is pretty worn by now (on the floor anyway) and was never particularly attractive but I'd have left it up if I had my druthers. Now it'll all have to go.

Unlike the house in the blog post pictured above, there are no cement block walls. Although I guess if that interior wall between the tub nook and the weird room/closet is built of cement blocks, that would explain why that wall is so thick. I SPECULATE that there is a double wall there and will be taking that drywall down on the weird room/closet side to see what kind of damage there is (without having to knock down all that tile and cement mortar on the bathroom side). It would be weird if that were the only wall in the house built of cement block, and an interior wall too boot, but it is equally mystifying that they might have put up a double wall there as speculated/pictured. We'll see when I can get at it to take some of the wallboard down, but I have to move a bunch of stuff first and I'm not all that spry any more. Anyway.

The house was originally built with plaster lathe walls but the only places that still seems to exist are on the wall between the tub nook and the linen closet and behind the base cabinets in the kitchen. I say "lathe" but what I see under the kitchen sink is actually plaster and chicken wire, go figure. Everywhere else it was gutted and replaced with modern wallboard, probably about the same time (10 to 12 years ago) that a former owner moved the W/D and water heater into the garage.

The bathroom is going to have to be gutted - at this point I figure I can count myself lucky if the studs don't end up having to go, too. The bottom plate at the very least has got to have water damage by now. Also, I'm pretty certain that the cast iron shower drain will have to be at least partially dug out and replaced at least up to (and including) the p-trap. I am relatively certain there is no black mold because I am allergic to it and have had no problems here. I don't have to SEE it to know it is there, LOL! Stuff makes me sick as a dog. But there is bound to be additional water damage to the studs. At least they're all just partition walls.

Given all that, at this point I'm wondering just how far I can go with additional modifications without causing crazy crazy extra expenses. Putting a full 2nd bathroom into the weird room/closet is out of the question (because slab, 60 yo plumbing, and new toilets do not inexpensively mix), but maybe something a bit less extensive could be done? I'm thinking I would like to get the washing machine back into the house (moving the dryer and water heater back in would require moving or installing new gas lines and I'm not inclined to pay for that just to move out right away).

In addition to the weird room/closet to expand into, that closet on the top right of the drawing could also be folded into the weird room/closet or otherwise modified as needed, though the furnace needs to stay where it is. I am aware that we will be talking speculatively because we can't know exactly what a lot of this actually looks like until we start ripping things apart and digging into it. I'm just looking to spitball ideas.

At the very least I envision installing the new tub on the existing plumbing (more or less) but leaving that back wall currently between the existing tub nook and the weird room/closet open and walling up the side of the tub that is currently open to the bathroom. This would put the tub in its own space in that weird room/closet. So now you have a sort of half-bath with the toilet and sink and a new linen closet or shelves (the existing one will have to be torn out) and then the tub in its own private space. So at least someone taking a shower doesn't cut off access to the toilet, and no, I am NOT going for the communal toilet thing. Seriously. If you were a teenage boy, would you REALLY want your mother coming in to use the toilet while you're in the shower? Or vv. I know I wouldn't, LOL!

Not as good as a 2nd bath or extra half bath, but better than having both in the same space when you can only have one of each. This would take little extra work, given that all that would need to be ripped out and replaced anyway. Whether you put the back wall of the tub up where it is now or on the opposite side where the tub access is now, its not much difference in work/expense given we'll be tearing nearly all of the existing stuff out. The tub nook is deep enough that I could even put in a vanity or shelves along the new wall in the now-half bathroom. The tub nook is actually deeper than it looks on the drawing (eg the tub isn't actually THAT wide, I was just too lazy to draw it in exactly to scale).

Even better, I would LIKE to use the current tub nook to put W/D hookups (except for the gas line) so a washer and dryer could be installed there. The washer could come in but I would have to leave the dryer in the garage (and the water heater), but at least there would be SPACE to expand into for a future owner willing to deal with moving/installing gas lines. In the meantime I could put in fancy drying racks and would have space for a rolling laundry cart to schlep the wet laundry out to the dryer. The tub could go in the weird room/closet but would need drainage (since the washing machine would now be sitting where the tub used to). Given the slab has to be dug up at least some anyway, either run a new shower drain to T into whatever the current one Ts into (or whatever the right modifications would be), or get one of those greywater pumps to carry the effluent to somewhere easy to hook into the sewer line. It wouldn't be that far to go. It would probably necessitate ripping out the so-called "bookshelves" but they are useless as is anyway - too deep, the shelves are not moveable and are actually too close together for anything taller than a pocket paperback, and they have multiple layers of latex paint that anything you set on the shelf just sticks to anyway. No loss.

Basically any reasonable method of getting the tub into its own space and maybe even bringing the washing machine back into the house given the space I've got and considering that the money tree I planted never sets fruit. I'm also good with draining the washing machine into a laundry tub and using the greywater pump there or figuring some other way to get the drainage out. Since it all has to be ripped out anyway, I'd like to make the most cost effective changes possible that would end up with privacy between the tub and toilet and hopefully getting at least the washer back into the house.