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NICOLE: Coming up on "Rehab Addict"...
Who fell through my ceiling?
I'm seeing into the bathroom.
...I'm moving on to the interior work
of this cute, little 1920s bungalow.
Um, is this gonna fit?
The previous owner began converting
the attic level into a bedroom,
but left quite a bit of work unfinished.
We need a sink and a toilet and a tub.
So I'm picking up where they left off --
figuring out how to add a bathroom to the space.
So, we don't have enough room
to do a toilet and sink over here.
I buy and sell houses,
but I'm not your average flipper.
Oh, my God!
Why in the hell would you cover that up?!
I just want brick.
I don't just renovate.
I restore old homes to their former glory.
NICOLE: It's screaming, like, "Make me pretty again."
It's day and night...
There's always one last door.
...which is not easy when you're a single mom,
but I'm making it work.
I don't know. I still think I'm taller.
My name is Nicole, and I'm addicted to rehab.
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
I'm on a mission to revitalize
the more run-down neighborhoods in Minneapolis,
and this 1920s bungalow is the latest home
I'm working on to bring back from the condemned list.
I started with the exterior,
adding some curb appeal by rebuilding
all of the decorative brick work that was crumbling away.
Inside, I want to add a master suite
to the attic space.
What makes a master suite more than just a bedroom
is having an attached bathroom,
so I need to figure out the best spot up here
where I can tie into our existing plumbing
and add one in.
There's our bathroom. That way.
So, we need a sink and a toilet and a tub.
So, there will be a wall?
No, this is gonna be a door.
It's just gonna be a sliding door.
Wait. What do we have here? 54 inches.
We need 30 for the toilet,
so we don't have enough room to do toilet and sink over here.
But then -- Oh! Put our sink in that corner?
Put the tub there.
Here's our problem -- you can't get in the door.
Why does the tub even have to be closed in?
Why do we even need a wall there?
What if I could just build the water closet wall?
The only thing you ever want to hide
is the damn toilet, right?
What I'm thinking of doing is keeping the tub and sink
open to the bedroom while enclosing the toilet.
So, if we do our toilet right here...
Mm-hmm.
...then do I have 15 inches?
Can I build a wall right here?
With that window?
As long as you have 30 inches inside the inside.
And then we're just gonna put the tub out there.
And no walls at all. Just this one.
Yeah.
It's like an open-air master suite.
I'll sit here and play with this some more.
Before I leave, though, it'll all be drawn out.
Today, we're gonna insulate the second floor.
It's something we have to do,
because the second floor is all open,
which means I can't just cover it up with drywall.
We really have to add an R-factor here.
The closed-cell insulation is gonna be airtight,
it's gonna be watertight, but it's a messy job.
They're bringing in truckloads of this insulation,
and they literally spray it
all over the rafters and deck boards.
Oh, it's hard as a rock already.
Does this dry, like, right away?
MAN: Four seconds, it's dry to the touch.
Wow.
It looks like the North Pole up here.
This is the difference, now, between 1923 and present time,
Nope.
We had old newspapers and some horse hair.
So, we are well-insulated in this home now.
Scrappers are always in the area,
looking for old materials to pick up and recycle.
I have an old refrigerator I'm trying to get rid of,
so it's their lucky day.
Hey, you guys want a fridge?
Okay.
What else you got going on back here?
I see a brown stove. What is this? Is this a --
That's a radiator.
A radiator off a car, you got a recliner, you have a tub.
What are you doing with the tub?
It's just going to the scrapper, right?
Yeah, it's an antique, though, it could be restored.
It could be restored.
If I had nothing better to do today, right?
[ Laughs ]
What do you want for that?
I think it's only gonna be worth, like, 60 bucks to me.
Do you have all the claw feet or no?
It has three.
Well, I will definitely take that off your hands.
And then, I think that would give you enough room
Yeah.
Maybe we just put your truck there
and then we just dump it right there?
This is cool.
And you guys want the fridge?
Okay.
Here's $20, $30, $40, $50, and 10 in euro?
Euro? How much is euro versus American?
Here, this is like $15, so you're actually getting more.
Euro?
All right. Well, thanks, guys!
Okay. Have a good one.
I got rid of a fridge. I got a claw-foot tub.
I'm ahead of the game today.
I'm planning to leave the bathroom open to the bedroom,
but we'll still need to build a wall enclosing the toilet.
Does anyone think that this is gonna be weird,
I'm doing this open?
This is the last vote for this open-bathroom concept.
Well, it's different. It's different.
Um...
I'm used to seeing doors on bathrooms, myself.
But, you know, whatever works.
'Cause the tub's gonna be right there and pretty.
Right, right.
And then the sink.
You know what? If you don't like it -- big curtains.
I sure do.
We got to do some carpentry still.
We got to hang the Sheetrock.
It's kind of everyone coming together to get this done.
Who fell through my ceiling?
I'm seeing into the bathroom.
Hey!
[ Gasps ] They stepped hard.
The least they could have done was picked up the mess.
While everyone continues working upstairs,
I'm getting out of the way and turning my attention
to the claw-foot tub I saved from the scrappers.
Ta-da! Look at that.
All these claw-foot tubs
will take the paint that you put on them pretty well,
as long as the surface is clean and dry.
So, you just take a standard wire brush...
One of the most important things
that a lot of people forget on claw-foot tubs is the lip,
and they don't spend a lot of time wire-brushing.
So when the moisture beads up over this
from showers and baths,
this is the first place that usually starts to peel and chip,
is right underneath here.
So I always want to make sure
that I do an extra, extra good job right here.
So, this poor, little tub only had three feet left,
which means I need to go on a field trip
and find a foot for it.
And the claw feet actually weren't in bad shape,
so I'm just gonna rough them up a bit.
And these ones I'm gonna do straight black.
You got to count for every layer of paint on a claw-foot tub
equals about one spray-paint can.
So, this one, I'm guessing about four cans.
On this tub, I'm using a primer,
and then it's gonna be many, many coats of high-gloss paint
just to ensure that there's no cracking or peeling.
This is gonna be one pretty tub.
Building codes, bathroom codes --
my worst nightmare when we're trying to do
an open-floor-plan concept.
30 inches for the toilet, 24 inches in front,
move the claw-foot tub around.
I'm a visual thinker,
so Tom's actually cutting out some templates.
I want to see it exactly laid out.
So, there's our tub.
There's the toilet.
So, let's move the tub back to our original.
That's not gonna work.
Oh.
To get access.
Yeah, that's tight.
Well, I was worried about my 30 inches right there.
Well, it's only 15 to one side.
If you have nothing on this side, you're fine.
I thought it had to be 30.
Okay.
If you have no wall on the other side,
you only have to be 15 from here.
Like, in the corner.
Tom and I have been wracking our brains about this bathroom.
I think we have finally figured it out.
Our solution is to not completely enclose the toilet
and just build a privacy wall behind it.
Then the space feels less cramped,
and we have a little more wiggle room for the tub.
It's very unconventional.
But I think we've finally achieved the look
we want with the claw-foot tub, the little, tiny wall sink,
and the toilet hidden around the corner.
Oh, my God, I'm loving this now.
Mike's handling all the HVAC today on this house,
and it's just a lot of ductwork.
Thankfully, this isn't a huge house,
but the complications have been
that we have to get everything to the second floor
without ruining the integrity of the house.
Okay, so, this is...?
This is the supply line.
This is what feeds the air.
Yep.
And then this is the return, over here.
Okay, the return is just air
circulating throughout the house, right?
Yep, the return is just the air
getting pulled back to feed the furnace.
And then this is the one that goes upstairs.
Yep.
Sounds good to me.
While Mike continues the HVAC install...
...I'm going on a little field trip.
Running into Bauer Brothers.
I'm the only person who buys a claw-foot tub
with just three feet.
I'm hoping they have one to match this,
but you never know.
I've already painted the one I have,
and it's -- I don't think it's very unique.
It looks like a standard turkey claw.
But the thing I want to match
is the feather detail down to the claw,
because this is the focal point of this bathroom,
and in my mind, the feet have got to match exactly.
Otherwise it'll drive me crazy.
The other thing is, claw feet can be different heights.
The most important thing is that
whatever claw foot you get to match is the same height.
I'm sorry, lady.
Dude, she's got, like, high heels on.
That's some pretty fancy-shmancy stuff here.
We got green ones. We got white ones.
Give me one with some feather detail.
None of these have feather detail.
That's a cool one. Not a match, though.
That's my foot.
That's a dead-on match. That's insane.
Sweet.
All right, now if I could only get out of here.
Excuse me. Pardon me. It's like going to the movies.
What's up?
Who fell through my ceiling?
I don't know.
I just showed up about 15 minutes ago.
No one knows who fell through the ceiling,
but I'm seeing into the bathroom right now.
Which means somebody stepped down here.
How much damage do you think it did to my downstairs?
A whole foot worth, right?
Some days, I just can't catch up.
Hey!
[ Gasps ]
They stepped hard into the ceiling.
That looks like Bigfoot stepped on it.
So, they must have hit it
and just punched right down on it.
[ Sighs ]
No one's gonna take the blame, ever.
They're gonna keep passing the buck.
And at the end of the day, I'm patching a ceiling now.
The least they could have done was picked up the mess.
Oy.
All right, Clark. I don't have any extra of this material.
So there is no room for mistakes.
I like it, Clark!
NICOLE: I have no plans to put a floor up here.
This is the floor.
If you would be so kind as to remove the nails...
Yeah, I'm gonna pull all the nails.
...and figure out what goes where, as close as you can.
After putting in new plumbing,
I have to repair the floor where we had to pull it up,
and there's a lot of nails to pull out of old boards.
These things, nail pullers, saves you so much time,
and it saves the condition of your wood.
All right, Clark. I don't have any extra of this material.
So there is no room for mistakes on this one.
We'll have to do the old jigsaw.
This is actually the finished floor for this bathroom,
so the last thing I want to see is screws.
Everything should be hand-nailed up here,
to keep the authenticity of the floor.
The floor is back down.
It's not perfect, it's not going to be.
Now it's a matter of finishing up all the extra stuff.
And sooner or later, we get to move the fixtures in,
and I'm so excited to see
this beautiful claw-foot tub go right here.
We had to build out all of these boxes
because they had to run all the venting and the ductwork
up for this new furnace.
It takes up a lot of this space, so I thought,
"Why don't we just make them little benches in the room?"
I didn't want to wrap them in drywall
because I thought it would look, you know, like, new boxes.
And I have a bunch of old doors left over, so I keep thinking
we're just gonna chop them up and put them on here.
This ought to be interesting.
All right, let's see what I have in material.
Okay, so, I think we should be able to cut these things down,
panel them out, and that way, it looks kind of old.
I think.
All right, let's get them cut.
Okay, let me see here.
This looks like a million bucks.
Seriously.
CLARK: It's gonna look really nice.
[ Growls ] [ Raspy ] Sawdust.
Sawdust is bad.
[ Normal voice ] Oh, I like it, Clark!
This cheap, stupid door that was broken down.
Look at it. I love that!
One of the biggest obstacles, I think, for a lot of people
is that sometimes all the casing is gone around these windows.
I always want new spaces to match the existing spaces.
And downstairs, everything is old-school.
We have sills, we have wide casings,
and it's really important that I match that up here.
So what we're doing is we're re-creating
what would have been here,
which is a sill, an apron, side casings, and a head casing.
I'm just using stock pine. All in all, cost me about $20.
And very shortly, this looks like the original.
Here's a common problem that people run into all the time,
is you go to put down this piece of casing...
and you have all this gap underneath here.
So, we're gonna solve that.
We're just using some scrap wood to make an extension jam,
which is pretty much a fancy word for saying
we're putting a piece of wood in there to fill up the space.
After it's painted, it'll look like
it's been rocking here since 1929.
It's much lighter with four people, right?
The good news is you're halfway there.
Is this gonna fit?
It seems hard to believe, but we're finally ready
to bring the claw-foot tub upstairs.
It's much lighter with four people, right?
I'm just the gate keeper.
And we're going through the front door,
that's what we decided?
[ Strained ] Yeah.
The good news is you're halfway there.
[ Indistinct conversation ]
Um, is this gonna fit?
You got it?
We got one down on this end.
Now we got it.
Well, it's up here.
Just a few more finishing touches
and this master suite will be complete.
My very first old home was a 1928 bungalow
with an unfinished second floor,
so when I walked into this one, it was full circle,
and all I could think
was master suite, master suite, master suite.
And right now, I'm thinking, "Wow!"
This is the most amazing space I've done in a very long time.
Even though it was completely brand-new,
I really wanted this space
to feel just as original as the downstairs.
I was able to achieve this by bringing in old elements.
The claw-foot tub, using the original windows,
using salvaged doors to make my window boxes,
and most importantly the floors.
They are huge planks of old pine.
75 years in this house,
so the pine is definitely over 100 years old.
Simply gave them a real quick sanding,
three very heavy coats of polyurethane,
and it looks amazing.
The bathroom was such a headache.
I mean, how many times could I sit there and say,
"If I put the tub here and then the toilet here
and the sink here."
I must have rearranged this a hundred times.
But now that we've tucked the toilet
behind the privacy wall, I achieved my goal,
which was I wanted the beautiful claw-foot tub
to be the focal point of this upstairs, and it is.
If this was an original bathroom in 1923,
I'm pretty certain
it would look very similar to what we put in.
Throughout this room,
I used little, tiny pieces of salvaged house parts
to hide the ductwork.
I did not want anyone to know
that we have all this modern heating and cooling in here.
Taking the old doors and building my window seats...
...It's seriously one of my favorite projects yet,
because this is proof you can add modern things
but not take away the character of the home.
This master suite is what is going to sell this house.
[ Alarm wails ]
I'm on hold with 911.
Next time on "Rehab Addict"...
Every single day, this is what I face --
downpour of rain.
They just put a new roof on this house and it is leaking.
That is a water leak.
All right, let's do it.
This house smells so wrong!
It's a combination of wild cats and water damage.
Ugh! I give up on this!