We headed to Joshua Tree, California on 15 April to check in with family. A close friend has a RV spot at his house that is close to my mom’s, with both 50A electrical and water.

The plan was to tear out my mom’s cramped bathroom and make it more open. Mom is 92 and we needed to make the bathroom more senior friendly. Here is what it looked like…

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Basically the corner shower was the problem, hard to get into, dark, high step up to get into. The plan was to replace the washer/dryer with stackable units and to expand the bathroom into part of the laundry room space. First up was demo the wall between the bathroom and laundry room.

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I relocated the water, drain, electrical to a new wall pushed close to the new stacked washer/dryer. The next up was demo of the vanity and the corner shower. My older brother David came to help out and I could not have got it done without him.

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It took both of us four full days to demo the walls, remove the show and get back to just the slab and studs. We filled up a few small dumpsters along the way and removed several thousand pounds of cement…

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You can see the outline of the old corner shower and tape covering the old toilet connection. The red line shows the new shower location.

Next up was to start the rebuild. I had Cathy’s brother Mark come out from a Ohio to help with the next step since he does tile for a living and has rebuilt a number of bathrooms. We needed to build a false wall due to the electrical panel and angle the ceiling due to wiring. We put in blocking for handrails, cut open the floor to realign plumbing….

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Next up was new drywall and cement board to close up the walls…we textured the ceiling, put in new lights, waterproof the shower with the red rubber.

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After a coat of paint we started tiling and putting in fixtures…

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We got everything in place except a glass splash panel to go between the end of the vanity top and the shower.

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I could not have done it without the help of everyone, we have been here over a month working on this project. With the lockdown, we basically hunkered down to just work on the bathroom while we waited for stuff to open up. We did get in some quality time with family and got to take Mark and Robin through Joshua Tree National Park and to see the beach in Oceanside, California.

We will be adjusting our future plans as some of the spots we were planning to go to are still on a lockdown and not operating normally so stay tuned. But being close to family and helping out has been a great distraction. Having the ability to relocate to adjust to local conditions a godsend.