Before:

Cast iron waste line in bath floor with cut floor joists

 

After:

Complicated bathroom floor framing to accommodate plumbing

 

Closer view of complicated bathroom floor framing to accommodate plumbing

 

 

Leo Tuccinardi, our plumber, is technically proficient, but we really love him because he talks to us.  I think we spent an hour or more staring at this small bathroom and making sketches on scraps of 2×4, but we figured out how to accommodate both the pipes and the floor structure.  The final framing layout bears almost no resemblance to anything you’d find in a carpentry textbook, but I’m pretty confident that the 12×24 tile in the finished bathroom won’t crack.