Bathroom - Day Two/Day Three - Finish Demolition

I'm pretty sure a lot of people are similar to I am when it comes to taking on a large project. I'm actually wondering if someone is reading this now (in the future), about to do a project of their own. I go online, read other people's stories and experiences doing remodels of rooms in their house. Everyone has some type of horror story -- bad construction, garbage, old beer bottles, rodents, bugs, etc. I'm almost sad that I didn't run into anything that looked like a horror story. If anything, the horror of our place was how well it was built, and I'm a little sad... because I really doubt we're going to be able to do a better job of this. :( Everything was ridiculously solid, overengineered, you name it. For a sixty year old house, it should not have been this well sealed or put together. We're lucky to have the place, but man, did that suck.

The horror story for our house is I'm pooooooooped.

We didn't do much during the week after "Day One", maybe an hour or so of continued work on a Tuesday, so I'm not counting it as a day. Day Two was Saturday, and was actually about four hours of work. We knocked out the rest of the walls except for a couple of corners and the attic-facing wall -- I wanted to make sure we finished the floor before pulling that wall out, as I thought we were going to have to tarp it up to keep the house sealed. The floor was finished, finally.

Man, the floor.

The floor was a standard small-pieces-of-ugly-tile routine. After we took a little class on tiling, we figured ripping that up would be a cinch, but no. This is old school. This is tile, on top of a good 3 inches of floor mix, on top of wire mesh, on top of tar paper, on top of the wood subfloor. My wife decided to take the floor on during the first day, made a good effort, but didn't make it too far at that point. On the second day, we found a bigger hammer, and she found her groove with the larger hammer and using the wonderbar as a chisel and puller. She cranked through the rest of that bathroom tile, and we both pulled up the two layers of metal mesh until the wood subfloor finally appeared. At that point, we called it good for the day.

Just to give you an idea of what the walls and floor look like in a dumpster, this is what is now sitting in our driveway. Trust me, it looks bigger in person.

Today (Day Three) was the finish line for demolition. We took out that last wall to find.. more insulation, so waiting so long to do it ended up being pointless. Fought with some edge drywall, took off drywall sticking to high and low places, accent tile around a closet, and yanked frames off of doors, cabinets, and the window. After everything was yanked out, and the nails removed from the studs, some serious sweeping was required, and the room was totally. finally. done.

Well, done being destroyed. It's now useless as a bathroom. :)

Next step - call a plumber, ask about adding some water lines and a new drain. Once the plumber is finished, drywallin' time.

I'm so glad my wife does most of the work.

I'm pooped. :)