The Demolition Stage

The demolition stage is often the most fun of any project. We actually did break out the sledge hammer and the sawzall and went to town. The first to go? The broken prefab fiberglass shower stall from 1975 that the previous owners broke and covered with a brand new sucky-footed bath mat. Shame on us for not looking, I admit, and shame on them for being underhanded and sneaky, but don't you think the house inspector should have noticed? That being said, the reason we started this project was because we had only one working tub, and it was in the second suite. We purchased this house in October of 2003 and used this shower for one week before we found the problem. Nice.

So, the sawzall-removed damaged portion of the tub, and more feet.


Once the tub was out, it became clear that the disgusting, aged linoleum also had to go. It was actually relatively easy to pull up. The nice thing that we learned was that the bath and toilet were seated directly on concrete, so no concrete board. The distressing thing that we learned was that the bath and toilet were seated directly on concrete, so no moving anything around. The piping would have to stay where the piping lay.


Things we undoubtedly shouldn't have been messing with, but we wanted a new fan and light fixture! So, out came the old box, in went the new. (Eventually, we are talking months apart at this point.)

Another somewhat distressing moment. Turns out that the electrical box for the lower portion of the house butts up against the shower. Clever. So, being pragmatic, intelligent, and paranoid, we decided to add extra water and leakage protection to this wall in the form of an additional sheet of backer board and some plastic. Here's hoping...


The crazy ugly linoleum stopped at the doorway to the bath which ran into carpet. The carpet ended at the vanity/sink area where this white tile started. Ugly white tile. I never did like it, and some of them were not seated correctly EVER, so they would wobble when you walked on them. This part of the demo was particularly satisfying for me. I very much enjoyed ripping these up. We were told by our next door neighbor, who has the same style unit as ours with the plan flipped, that the entire bathroom, shower stall, toilet, vanity and closet area all used to be carpet. They knew this, unfortunately, because their unit hadn't been updated since '75 when it was built. I felt a little better, but for some reason desperately wanted to finish the remodel even more. All of a sudden felt like we were living in ancient lands...

I can't explain the icepack, by the way. Must have damaged myself in the process. Don't mock the use of the foot to pry up the tile. I was EAGER to make progress. Injury be damned. Besides, you all should know that I have ambidextrous hands AND feet. I am so amazing.


This is actually a preview of later work, but it also demonstrates two important elements of the project. 1. We decided that having the linen closet open onto the hall was stupid, so we decided to flip it so that it opens into the bathroom. 2. We took part of the wall out, just for fun. No more wall/medicine cabinet/electrical outlet here! We moved, or removed, it all. Fun times were had.

Also unfortunately poorly documented. Where you can see the wood top right now, that was the wall. Went all the way to the ceiling. You can kind of see the overcrowded counter top and the mirror in the background. We didn't really get any good shots of it because we hated it. Sigh. I know now to better document the whole process. At any rate, when you walked into this bathroom, you got a face full of you. Everywhere. Mirrors, mirrors, and more mirrors. It was like an altar to every individual personage. That might be your bag, baby, but it wasn't ours.


And so a great portion of the demolition was done at once. We were eager to get started, and demo happens fairly quickly, but after that, things got somewhat delayed...