No more progress on the wall so far, still waiting on Lowe's shitty installers to call me
I did, however, get my TV mounted up in the corner this weekend which turned out to be a project and a half. Bought an in-wall wire kit, spent about an hour trying to get the tube for the wires to feed through when we finally realized that because it was an exterior wall there was most likely a fire stop that was blocking it. Had to cut a hole in the drywall and then cut a notch out of the firestop to pass the tube through. All is well that ends well lol.
I also was having a problem with some bubbling of my laminate wood flooring in and near my guest bathroom. This was a bigger issue than it sounds like for multiple reasons, 1) there is no way to determine where this issue is coming from without ripping the floor up, 2) I don't have any spare planks as the flooring was already in when I bought my house, 3) potential mold/mildew, 4) it could have been caused by a combination of humidity from the recent very heavy rains and moisture in the air from the steam caused by hot showers, 5) as anyone who has had water damage/issues before knows, good luck finding the source and feeling confident in what you found.
I tried going under the house (raised foundation/crawl space) to get a look from below and see if I could identify an issue, but a combination of the muckiness from the rains and my slight claustrophobia made this impossible. I got all suited up in full tyvek and rain gear, laid 6 mil plastic out in front of me and dropped down into the crawl space. I made it about 3.5ft army crawling through the mud before panic ensued. At this point, I decided to just rip the floor up and see if I could identify what I was dealing with.
It appears after the demo, that the issue was coming from the toilet. This is still not guaranteed, but due to the way the water was pooling and the area effected definitely makes for the most logical explanation. I have a feeling that the assholes who renovated my house prior to me purchasing it replaced the toilet without putting in a new wax seal (I don't know shit about plumbing/toilets but even I know this is not how it's supposed to be done). This caused the seal to not be complete and water to slowly leak from the toilet over time, leading to eventual bubbling of my floor. Additionally, when they installed the flooring, they laid down a layer of laminate wood planks and bolted them down to the subfloor. Then, they laid a moisture barrier on top of those laminate wood planks and installed the top layer of laminate wood floor (floating) above it. This caused the leakage to saturate the entire bottom layer of laminate (if you've dealt with these before, you know they are just fiberboard nonsense that absorbs water like a sponge) and trap the water underneath the moisture barrier but with room for it to live. Eventually, it got bad enough that in some way the water got around the moisture barrier leading to my eventual findings.
There is good and bad to this situation. The bad is that now I have to replace the bathroom floor, and drop money I hadn't planned on spending. The good is that since I already have the floor ripped up and vanity/toilet pulled, I might as well overhaul the entire bathroom with half the demo being done. Also good - I am learning more and more.
TLDR: I had to rip up my bathroom floor due to flooding/leaking and now I have to decide what to do next.
Pics:
An example of the bubbling in my flooring. This is not my floor, just a random pic stolen from the interwebz that shows what my issue was.
My bathroom floor after being demo'd. You can still see the vanity on the bottom right of the pic, which I pulled out and finished pulling up the flooring after snapping this pic. The main saturation/pooling of water is pretty apparent directly in front of the toilet.
