Collapsing Bathroom Floor

Yes, you read that right.  Needless to say, it's been a busy week and weekend around here. We had some great friends over last Friday night and at one point, I noticed my toilet was leaking. I put a towel behind it and made a mental note to check it out the next day.  Saturday morning I decided to check the connections and when I was mopping up the floor, I noticed the floor in the back and to the side of the toilet was squishy and had some give to it.  So I decided to take out the toilet and see what was going on... as soon as I pulled up the toilet, I noticed the floor all around it was collapsing!  The wax ring had very obviously failed and it looked like it failed a LONG time ago.  I pushed on the floor a bit and the whole dang thing fell through and suddenly I was looking at my crawlspace!  Bring on the meltdown.. it totally happened.  I woke my husband up and he said, "we're just going to have to call someone to fix it."  WHAT???  I don't even want to know what it would cost me to have someone fix this.  I literally wanted to just go hide under the covers.  Here's the hubby checking out the hole I pushed in.  You can see the insulation in our crawlspace.

In a state of panic, I messaged one of our friends that I knew had remodeled part of his house and he came right over.  He said he could help us.. no problem!  Then he said something that put me completely at ease, "all a house is, is wood and nails."  All worries melted away, he was right!
We had to cut out the sub-floor and remove all parts that were damaged.  You cut this in a square or rectangle and cut all the way to the joist.  Our joists were 1.5" wide, so I used my hand held circular saw and cut 3/4" across so the when we laid the new sub-floor, we'd have something to nail it to. Sorry, I didn't take ANY pictures or even think about it.  I'll do better next time... which hopefully there will not be a next time for a project like this!

I wasn't really ready to completely renovate the bathroom, but now seemed like as good of a time as any(I've been tired of the brown walls for a while), so we went ahead and laid the cement board for tile.

I also went ahead and repaired the walls.  I had a ton of nail holes and there was old wallpaper behind the vanity and toilet to remove.  TIP:  I used a mixture of 1 to 1 HOT WATER and laundry softener. Mix small batches so that your water stays hot!  I had peeled the first layer off, so when I sprayed this mix on the 2nd layer, it just scraped right off!

I purchased this tile and will go with a dark grey grout.  I'm going to put in a white vanity, but I want something different.  I've seen a few that I like, but none that have been "the one" yet.  I am going to do a light gray paint and white trim. I am incredibly slow on these projects... but hopefully it won't take too long to put these pieces back together.

Tonight I played around with which direction I liked best for laying the tile.  Here are a couple of dry runs. 

I think I've decided on the first one.  What do you think??  I've read about the different ways to lay the pattern for wood look tile and it seems like the consensus is to stagger them 1/3 of the way down.  The pic above does NOT represent that...I was just laying them as fast as i could.


I am not going to lay it until after I paint, and hope to do that this weekend.

Wish me luck!!