Bathroom - Day One - Begin Demolition!

One of the advantages to living in a fairly close-knit community is that you generally know your neighbors, and those who have been there a while can tell you stories about those who lived in your house before. When we bought the house in March of 2010, one of our neighbors added me as a friend on Facebook the day we closed, as did the two people who owned the house. If anything, that felt like a good sign -- the owners were confident enough in the home that I could stalk them fairly easily, and either the neighbor wanted to know us, or wanted to know about us, and I was okay with it either way. Anyway, one of the stories is that the original owner of our home either designed or contracted the construction of many of the similar homes in the area, but this was the one he designed for himself. I'm not sure why -- it's not the best part of the surrounding area in terms of location, it's not at an intersection with a big yard, so who knows if it's true. What is true, however, is this home is solid as a rock. We rediscovered that today.

We started a little before noon by getting out all of our supplies, and taping up a plastic barrier on the door to keep out dust, especially since the door was likely going to come off at some point today. We sealed the top, and under an hour later, one side. Note that the door matches the angle of the ridiculous ceiling in there.

... and we finally got around to actually starting to pull things apart. Everything starts with motivation, but motivation only gets you so far when you've never taken a toilet apart before, or figured out how those built in soap dishes are actually held on. Bit by bit, though, we figured this old bathroom out. Pulled the toilet out with minimal spillage and sealed it up with a plug. Got the sink pulled off after cranking on the shutoff valve with a pipe wrench. From there, it just slid up and out. We ended up hammering on the soap dishes, toilet paper holder, and towel bars with a hammer. From there, it was an easy transition to start stripping the tile off the wall, since the holes were already there. The worst part of this first part was just carrying all of our newfound crap downstairs and out to the bagster. :(

As mentioned before, we're trying to add a shower to this bathroom. Due to the ridiculous shape, one whole half of the bathroom can't reasonably have fixtures. I mean, sure, we could put a toilet there, but then everyone who uses it would have to sit. Awkward for some. So, the plan was to take a chunk out of one of the walls, and trying to put an inset sink in there. The bathroom's floorplan looks like a horizontally flipped P, which we thought was a little odd, as there was some obvious negative space between the bathroom and the bedroom next to it. We drilled a hole in that wall, saw pipes on either side, and thought that it made sense that there was a wall there -- but we could make it work! So, let's rip out some drywall, and...

eff.

Right about where a fantastic place for a sink would be, of course that pipe has another pipe coming out of it. There's also a lot of wood framing in the way, but that's all workable. This? This may be another few questions and few hundred from either the plumber or another contractor, depending on what this pipe is for. I'm sure we'll figure it out.. maybe.. or there's a lot of sitting in my future.

Anyway, end of the day arrived. We got all of the wall tile off, made a good start on drywall and floor tile, and ordered tile and supplies to tile from one of the tile places nearby. We're tired, it's hazy up there, and a shower sounds great. All in all, a good start.