Demo Day

We began demo as soon as our tenants moved out, give or take a day. I had some hesitations, but after about 4 hours in, things were going smoothly. Looking back, it probably was one of the easiest parts of the whole job!

We started by removing the toilet and sink, trying to damage as little plumbing as possible in the process. The fake tile board around the tub came down next so we could remove the tub. What a pain… someone must have used liquid nails to glue it in place because it came off in about 200 little pieces.

After the tile board came down, we could remove the tub. This was not difficult, but we did find some old insulation with half a ton of rat turds and a few skeletons. Gross.

Next we removed the wood paneling that lined the walls, took down the old storage closet, and removed the old subfloor, opening everything to the crawlspace below. Again moving carefully so as not to disturb any fragile existing plumbing.





At this point the extent of deterioration / damage to the existing structure was becoming evident, and concerning.  The above image is a perfect example - multiple chunks of wood tacked onto eachother in a bad attempt at shoring up all the compromised floor joists.  There were no intact joists remaining anywhere under the bathroom.

After all the demo was done, we were left with a completely gutted room. No floor. No walls… And several tons of trash and building materials in the back driveway. 

Exposed plumbing for the 2nd floor bathroom above, and the structural hack job someone did to fit it all in:

Obviously we couldn't NOT fix this, or the upstairs' rusting iron supply lines that someone connected directly to copper.

The result of demo day, as seen from our back driveway:

Over the next several weeks, one garbage can at a time, we got rid of it. Well most of it. To be honest, we still have some of the old wood paneling out back.