Month: April 2011

The Gutting of the Bathroom Day 9

Day eight was demolition day.  We cut a hole in the living room wall adjoining the bathroom.  This was done in order to get the icky tub and vanity out of the room and to get the new tub in the bathroom.  Mitch finally broke down and let me use some of his power tools.  He let me use the sawsall and it was fun.  We cut up the old ugly bathtub and carried it out in pieces to the El Camino to wait for the city clean up day and go away forever.  Mitch removed the cracked cast iron sink from the vanity and it went to wait with the bathtub.  I personally hauled out the “lovely” faux wood grain counter top out to the truck.  We dragged the vanity out of the bathroom to the living room, but someone with a lot more “lead in his pencil” will have to help Mitch get it out of the house.  It is really heavy.  Mitch didn’t want to cut it up, not sure why.  I would have. 

We were able to remove the huge honkin mirror from the wall and carry it outside without breaking it.  We carefully laid it on top of the old station wagon mirror side up so that the birds will see themselves flying over head.  Mitch removed the sheetrock from the walls that will hold the new tub.  It’s surprising how big the room is empty. Eight foot by ten foot, as big as some tiny bedrooms.

Day nine Mitch’s vacation is over and had to go back to his real job.  I think he’s really glad to get back and get some rest.  This means that this is going to take longer than we (I) thought.  So for now, we have to shower in the basement bathroom.  Woo hoo.  Sadly, my vacation is over too.  I have to go back to work tomorrow.  But we’re still married.

The Gutting of the Bathroom Day Six

Day Six scraping the ceiling didn’t go so good.  Imagine that.  Because of the confined space, the bathroom had extra thick popcorn texture sprayed on it.  Scraping the ceiling is one of those projects where the doing doesn’t sound so back until you actually start the doing.  Then you remember that it really sucks, but once you start scraping, there’s no stopping, you have to finish the whole room. 

After I had finished, Mitch looked at the ceiling and pointed out a spot that he thought still had a little too much texture.  I wasn’t so sure, but thought that I would see if I could get a little more off.  I got a little more off alright, the sheetrock was too wet and I scraped off the texture all the way to brown paper.  And it wasn’t a little spot that came off, no I scraped off a big honkin strip of sheetrock.  Thinking there was nothing else to do, I started stripping off all of the sheetrock top, really soaking the textured paint.   What a mess.

Now not only have I scraped off too much, but I have a big horrible mess on the ceiling and on the floor.  Mitch tried to come in and help, but he quickly lost patience and fled to the garage to pull nails out of the salvaged boards.  Therapy I think.

The ceiling has to dry, then we’ll smear sheetrock mud over the whole ceiling, after that we can texture the ceiling again.  Just what we wanted to do, right.  I’ll let you know tomorrow if we’re still married.

The Gutting of the Bathroom Day 5

Day Four hit a snag. Big surprise. Mitch started to remove a one foot section of sheet rock from the end of the remaining closet and found the water supply vent pipe. The original plan was to remove the door from its present location which makes it a very shallow closet, cut off one foot from the end of the closet and move the door to the end, making the closet deeper and giving the room a more open feeling. Well not now. Moving the vent pipe would entail a very extensive, expensive and time consuming operation.

Mitch was really reluctant to tell me for fear of me going ballistic. Just one more reason to hate this house. No matter what I want to do, we have to alter and adjust our plans. I’ve thrown so many fits over the past five years, when we first started on this renovation path. But this time I surprised him and just shrugged my shoulders and said, “Oh well, we’ll just leave the door where it is and forget about moving the pipe.

He didn’t realize it probably helped that I had gone shopping earlier and bought the faucets, mirrors and fixtures that I liked without any interference, then came home and had two glasses of wine. I was feeling very relaxed.

Day Five today I’m going to scrape the nasty popcorn ceiling off, which is lots of fun. I have to stand on a ladder, wear a mask and goggles and stretch in the most contorted positions to scrape sections of the ceiling. Get down, move the ladder, climb the ladder, stretch, scrape, get down, move the ladder and on and on. You get the picture. Lots of fun, want to come and help?

The Gutting of the Bathroom Day 3

Day One didn’t go as planned.  I would have expected nothing less.  Mitch wasn’t done installing the new front door that we had to put in to fit the hole in the wall.  I forgot to mention that, sorry.  The new tub/shower we bought wouldn’t fit through any of the doors into the house, so in order to get the new tub inside, he had to remove the front door and cut a bigger hole in the side of the house so that the tub would fit through the doorway.  Mitch started that project two weeks ago and as usual, the three-day project took two weeks.  The original structure of our house was built in 1928, when the short people ruled the world.  Then an addition was added on in the 1930’s.  Whoever built the original structure and the addition used whatever materials were available and there were no building codes then.  The roof comes down and meets the top of the walls at right about six feet.  There is no way to put in a regular height door without a building permit and an expensive front entryway built.  So we did the next best thing, bought a solid wood door and cut inches off the top and bottom of the door so that it fit height wise.  There was still the width to worry about.  The original door was six-foot by thirty inches wide and did I mention it was an old fashioned homemade cabin door with a wooden slide bar?  Straight out of the 19th century.  Not the least bit in anyway energy efficient or even safe security wise.  So the door had to go.  I’ll post pictures.

I took out all of the shelves in the closets and tried removing the metal wall strips for adjustable shelving, but some of the screws were stripped and wouldn’t come out.  So I gave up on getting much accomplished on day one and decided to take the dogs for a long walk.

Day Two, Mitch worked on finishing up installing the new storm door and because the weather was so beautiful, I decided that it would be a good day to mow.  So I mowed the yard, pulled weeds, raked leaves and pretty much blew off another good day to work on the bathroom.

Day Three we actually got started.  Mitch finished getting all of the metal strips out while I pulled all of the trim off around the window and doors.  I pulled all of the base board out.  While Mitch removed the doors and door frames and knocked out the sheet rock that encased the closets I went to the plumbing store and picked up the pedestal sinks we had ordered..  We found the vent pipe from the furnace which will have to be moved from the outer corner of where the closet was and no longer is.  Mitch is getting his money’s worth out of his sawsall that I bought him.  I think that’s his favorite tool. 

Surprisingly, no fights yet.  Is this an omen or the lull before the storm?  I’ll keep you posted.