Renovation Roadtrip: Master Bath Demo Begins

So, I’ve been talking about tearing the master bathroom out for… how long have I owned this house? Eight months? Yes, so basically every day for the last eight months. I don’t even care so much about putting a new bathroom in right away, I just want the old one out.

Why? If you’ve never watched the Liberty House Tour (and seriously, no one should let me have a video camera when I haven’t slept in a month from the stress of buying a house at auction) here’s a not-so-brief walk-through of the bathroom.

Yeeeah. Out.

And in order to really start this project, the bigass jacuzzi tub needed to be removed, and as much as I like to do things without any help at all ever, this was definitely not a one-woman job.

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So this was at the top of the list for projects I needed help from the Renovation Roadtrippers on… not just for the extra set of hands, but also for moral support when opening the lid of the toilet-on-carpet, which I had not turned on or flushed since the winterizers antifreezed it nine months ago. Note: antifreeze does not age well in toilets.

As far as the tub removal goes, after a brief discussion we knocked a hole in the tile by the faucet to see if there were shutoff valves (there were, thankfully).

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And once we knew everything was kosher, we took to the rest of the tile with the hammer and pry-bars.

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Once the tile was out we busted out the sawsall to take care of the wood frame. Here’s one of those fun things you find when you deconstruct a house…

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Apparently the frame for this was originally constructed way too low, and instead of re-framing they just nailed a bunch of scrap 2x4s on top of it. And, hey, it worked. Wasn’t super fun to cut through with the sawsall, but hey, that’s demo…

Once that was done we scooched the tub out far enough for me to wedge myself behind and under it to disconnect the wiring. I’m so used to talking to myself in these situations that at some point I might have made a comment about being in close quarters with my own smelly shoes, and then I looked up and realized, hey! that was out loud! and there are other humans in here!

Luckily they have a sense of humor and are probably really desensitized to my awkward craziness from reading this website.

Once the electrical was disconnected, the big fun was getting it out of the house, which meant down the stairs. You’ll have to check out Chris and Meryl’s post about their time at the Liberty House on Tinkernation here to see more of the in-progress pics as we moved it down the stairs. (There’s at least one incredibly awkward picture of me balancing with one foot on the newel post and one on the wall trying to lift up the light fixture. I have multiple chins. It is awesome.)

Once we got it outside we were DONE with the lifting, so we had a brilliant idea about how to get it to the barn. By “we” I mean Chris.

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Yes. Yes, I did tie a rope to it and then drag it out to the barn with my car. If you can find a more hillbilly sentence in this entire website, I would be surprised.

The good news is, the biggest chunk of the bathroom is out…

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Now whenever I have a rough day at work I can come home and whack some more tile out with a hammer…

The real work won’t kick in on this room until after I finish up the mess of projects going on between the parlor, entry, stairs, and upstairs hallway. So, next week, right?

Okay, realistically it will probably be another month out at least, but it sure will feel good to get this place torn down to the studs, and, I’ll admit it, I couldn’t have done it without help.  Big thanks goes out to Meryl and Chris for risking life and limb to help me get that thing down the stairs.

9 Responses

  1. It looks like you had a great time with Chris and Meryl and got a lot done too. It must be so exciting to be started on the bath (even knowing it’s going to be a little while until you reach the finish line). I love your hillbilly moment of dragging the tub behind your car. We used the same technique to get our woodstove out of our basement–very, very strong, very, very long rope through the front door and down the basement stairs, attached at one end to my dad’s truck and at the other to the woodstove. It worked, but it’s not an experience I have any desire to repeat ever.

  2. You certainly appear to be having fun and that’s the important part of any remodeling project. Most people look at it as a chore but with a few friends around to help out it really is such good fun.

    Good luck with the project.

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