I absolutely hate demo work. It’s hard on the body and extremely dirty – especially in an old house. My original plan was to outsource the demo work and then enjoy the rebuild. But in typical fashion, my contractor decided at the last minute that he didn’t want to do any demo work so I was left to scramble and do it myself.
I started by taking off all the existing tile. Most of the tiles were barely holding on as it was, so removing them wasn’t overly complicated. I used my trusty red tool and a hammer and got all the tiles off the walls and floor.
Once all the tiles were up and cleared out of the room, I then started removing the drywall in the shower. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find – I knew that the shower wasn’t waterproofed and once I started taking the drywall off I got to see first hand what 40 years of moisture does to insulation.
It took me a full day to remove all the tiles and drywall from the shower area.
On the second day I moved onto the ceiling. This is where things got really dirty and gross. I naively thought I would be removing one ceiling, but I quickly figured out that the previous owner had put drywall on top of an old plaster ceiling. I should have known better because we experienced the same thing when we were renovating our middle bedroom. The ceiling itself wasn’t so bad (except the black dirt that got everything). It was the strapping that was almost impossible to remove.
It was a really hard day, but by the end I had almost all of the drywall off the walls and ceiling. I just had a few spots left the tackle, but I didn’t have the strength to get the last stubborn bits off.
To keep the party going, I took a day off in the middle of the week to finish the last of the demo. Releasing the bathtub was quite difficult, as the drain was rusty and not budging – even with our new tub removal tool.
After a relentless go at it, Alex finally managed to get the drain loose and unthread it from the tub drain. Once it was free, we had a friend come and help carry the tub to the curb. Within 40 minutes someone had picked it up.
Once the toilet and the tub were out, it was look quite bare!
After the heavy items were out, I was on my own again to finish the rest of the demo. My next task was removing the concrete floor. At first the concrete seemed to come up relatively easily and I was hopeful. But as I progressed, I realized that they had poured this concrete in place, on some very annoying and stubborn wire mesh. The concrete was thick and very heavy and the wire had to be cut with wire scissors (or whatever the actual tool name is).
The third day was particularly hard on my body, but I managed to get everything demolished and cleared out before I had to pick up the kids. We are now ready to start planning how we’re going to re-route our plumbing and start measuring for our final design.
