Here we are in the third week of the One Room challenge hosted by apartment therapy.
I can’t believe I have been doing demo for two weeks straight now. The first week of the challenge, I introduced my plan and all of the fun things we are going to bring into the space. For the last two weeks, I have been doing demo almost constantly.
I thought I would be able to get it done in just a few days. This room had other plans.
I have been asked by a few different people why we are gutting it down to the studs. They asked, ” Why not just put something up over the plaster and tile?”
I understand we are going to extremes with this bathroom remodel. But it needed it.
Could we have just painted the walls? Yes.
But this room was SCREAMING to be loved again. It has leaked water down to the floor under it twice in the last year. The space we use as our living room had buckets in it to catch water for weeks. I patched, and re patched plaster, and then drywall in the ceiling fixing the leaking issues.
What I am getting at… Was the bathroom the worst bathroom on the planet? NO.
But it needed to be redone, and not just minor cosmetic stuff. It needed to be done right.
You can read in the last blog post I made about the walls in this house being uninsulated. They are all exterior cinder block walls, and we live in a cold Idaho town. Our house is ALWAYS freezing. One of the main renovations we are doing to this house is insulating it.
We did it in one room and it made ALL the difference.
But these exterior walls had tile on them, and that tile was cemented right to the cinderblock walls. So in order to add insulation to the room, the tile had to go. It was time consuming and painful work, but we got it all out!
We ran into lots of interesting things in the demo. See more of it in detail HERE.
This week we finished getting the bathroom completely gutted. It feels so good to have it done. We also said goodbye to our green Christmas tree in the shower.
We busted out the hallway closet to add that closet space to the bathroom square footage.
Found out the razor blades are pretty old and started being made in 1939. Found some old matches and an old tobacco container in the wall as well.
We removed the tub which took us a little bit of time to figure out, but my husband learned you can just smash it, and it will break right apart!
I took down the ceiling mirrors, which was a very time consuming and nasty task. They were harder than the wall mirrors because once one cracked it just fell and shattered all over the floor. There were glass shards EVERYWHERE.
I was also able to remove the ceiling particle board/ plaster, and all of the insulation in the rafters. This opened up the ceiling to the attic, and let us see what is going on as far as wiring is concerned.
Lastly, I pulled up the linoluem floor. It came out in a pretty big chunk. Then under it the wood was in rough shape. It is the same wood floor I refinished in the girls bedroom, but in much worse condition. It had water damage everywhere, and the glue from the linoleum was plastered all over it.
After looking closer we could see that the water damage had extended to the subfloor in a few spots as well. So I began ripping out the wood floor piece by piece.
Under the wood floor was a piece of thick covering paper material that was completely covered in water damage rings, and mold. We ripped that and all of the nails that were left behind and we are down to the subfloor.
We will have to replace a couple of boards in the subfloor this week to make sure it is strong enough and level etc. for the flooring we hope to put in.
This week the projects we got done made a huge impact. Here is a list of what we accomplished this week:
- Removed lathe and plaster on all remaining upper walls
- Finished removing the pink tile on the lower half of the walls.
- Removed all of the shower tile- goodbye christmas tree.
- Removed the studs in the closet areas to open up the original and hallway closet area into the vanity area.
- Cleaned out 100’s of razor blades
- removed storm windows
- Broke apart cast iron tub and removed it
- Removed all ceiling mirrors
- Removed all ceiling plaster and insulation
- Removed linoleum flooring
- Removed wood floors and assessed subfloor damage
- Removed all studs in the corner opening up the space for the water closet
- Cleaned up all of the demo stuff, and hauled away to the dump
This week we are hoping to start building it back up. Here is the to do list for this week.
- Removed any wire mesh still hanging on
- vacuum up all debris dust and stuff.
- Replace sub- floor planks that have rotted out
- Start insulation on the exterior walls, and build water closet wall
- Figure out where the cut wires we found in the attic go to…yikes
- pick up more materials from home supply store.
- Start vanity box build
Its going to be a busy week! Check out our progress in stories this week on Instagram at :
Determined_DIY
Thanks for being here!
-Amanda
#ORC #oneroomchallenge #bathroom #bathroomremodel #artdecobathroom