hi! Just trying to understand what you're doing with the shower, are you tilng a whole new shower? Or putting in an insert?

You can remove the baseboard backer.

Is the leaking shutoff for the sink water supply? or the toilet? if it's cdripping very slowly you could probably wait until you need to call the plumber for other stuff.

Get to know your plumber now. Pay for a service call just to have them consult on site.

Tiling the shower. So I will use cement board there. Leak is coming from the shut off for the sink supply, and I know if I shut off the main, it would stop the leak, but want to have access to the shower/toilet, etc.

That looks like hot water baseboard heat. You can carefully remove the backing plate and rebuild but don't create too much stress on the piping. You only need cement board in the shower. Yes it's going to be tough to get done in 3 days if plumber has to take up one of those days. You may have to get creative with polyethylene on the walls to protect your work as you go. Don't skip making sure your walls are shimmed out to plumb and in one plane. It makes your tiling job easier and better looking. If there are two layers in tub now, you'll need to shim out anyway as cement board has to overlap tub lip.

IMO you arrange for a plumber now and set a date for their call in the meantime you finish gutting everything and the toilet can stay connected after you remove the flooring just get a new seal and put the toilet back for use . As for the shower be prepared for a few days of having no shower so sponge baths out of the kitchen sink for sure. The plumber needs to address the leaky valve , put in the rough in for the shower and replacing the hot water baseboard heaters that IMO requires a pro so you can check with your plumber if they are capapble of doing that too. So gut repace toilet for use and live without the shower for now.

3 days is rough. Is there an existing tub and you are just tiling above that for a shower? I ask because we just built our own shower from the studs and it took way longer than 3 days especially when you consider the wait time for thinset to cure... flood testing the pan... etc.

If you are feeling ambitious you could look up how to replace the leaky valve on youtube with some sharkbite fittings. We had the same problem and fixed it pretty quickly, those fittings are meant to be simple!

Hi there! Way to go at this task! I think these comments are good suggestions to take in moving forward with this project! Best of luck to you!

You can DIY this properly if you ask lots of questions, watch lots of youtube videos, and take the advice offered here. We all started somewhere without any knowledge, so you can do it if you have the right attitude and lots of patience.

2. Just put a bowl or bucket under the valve and empty it regularly for now. Let the plumber address it when he comes to hook everything up.

3. I would do all the demolition now, and put the shower back together first. You can then finish the rest of the drywall, then tile the floor, then install the vanity. You can use a bathroom with stud walls, and the drywall finishing will be much more efficient to do all at once instead of one wall at a time. But tiling the shower is going to take some time, especially if this is your first tiling job. And depending on whether you're reusing the pan or installing all new. You might consider putting in a modular fiberglass or acrylic setup instead. If you post more photos of the room, that might give us more to comment on.

4. You don't typically have insulation in interior walls. And regular drywall is fine everywhere but the shower walls.

Existing tub, just demoing walls around and retiling (not sure yet of how high I want to go with the tile). Lots of loose tiles/mold. I’m hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst!

Side wall with window.

Current wall in the process of taking down

Closet(which is staying) so far.

Floor. Being replaced with 12x24 tile. I’m planing on removing floor tile, and keeping my fingers crossed that the subfloor is okay to work with.

Seabornman,
Do you think I should remove the backing plate? Or should I think about some sort or slip on cover that they have now? I know that using that will up the height on the baseboard, and I may struggle a bit once I pick the vanity I want. But I’m thinking along the lines of choosing a vanity with longer legs, and removing the back legs and attaching the vanity to the wall. Sort of like this.

@HU-206569992 wow I am getting major flashbacks because your bathroom layout looks almost EXACTLY like mine that I just redid. Even with the tiny closet too. We even have a similar sized window in the exact same spot. When I was planning I couldn't find any examples where the toilet faced the shower/tub (everone's layouts seem to have the toilet alongside the shower). But anyway I digress. I think even my floor tiles were the same as yours. Seriously.

Anyway, we kept our radiator backing plate and just put a slip on cover over the top and it looks 100% better. So easy to do, I wouldn't worry about it.

I would really urge you to focus on getting the shower demo'd and rebuilt and then start to work outward to the rest of the room, as @weedyacres suggested. That was how we did our bathroom and it worked well. It allowed us to keep the toilet in place as long as possible.

Typically the backing plate has brackets for holding the piping and fins in place so you shouldn't remove it completely. You can remove whatever attachment screws that hold the plate to the wall and try to remove the material behind.

how did the existing vanity but up against the wall where the heaters are?

The other thing that I wanted to mention, not to keep pushing the Ikea Godmorgon but you can buy legs for it and just install the ones you want. We bought ours with the intent to float it, but we bought the legs just in case we couldn't make it work. You could still mount it to the wall and put legs on the front, and avoid the ones in the back. example:

vanity