**this series is brought to you by the Home Depot. ok, so maybe not officially, but it might as well be for how many times we have been there over the past week, and how many times i suspect we will visit there over the course of this project.
hear that Home Depot? if you want to sponsor our bathroom reno, just let me know!**
as of last Tuesday, this bathroom renovation is officially underway! Mark started by turning off all the water to the bathroom and removing the toilet and vanity. the toilet is headed to the landfill. the vanity is headed to craigslist just as soon as i get around to taking a good picture of it.
my role in this whole reno is going to be pretty small, since the space is small and Mark is handy enough to not need me getting in his way. but i have been helping: my job on tuesday night was to open and close the back door so Mark could carry out the toilet.
on Thursday, the messy part of the demo started, as Mark busted out his big guns and a sledgehammer to take out the floor: all three layers of it. turns out we were working with tile on top of tile on top of a layer of masonry and metal mesh reinforcement.
the door stayed closed for pretty much all of this part of the demo process to keep the dust and the smell of man-sweat contained as much as possible, but i did manage to poke my head in a few times for photo-documentation purposes. Mark got both layers of tile out on Thursday night, and he took out all the masonry and mesh on Friday.
once the shower walls were all down and everything was bagged up, it was a race against the clock to borrow a truck, load it up, and make it to the landfill and unload the truck before it closed, so we wouldnt have all this construction debris just chillin in our backyard.
spoiler alert: we made it. with 2 whole minutes to spare. it really was very exciting and all kinds of nerve-wracking. sidenote: the landfill kind of smells.
unfortunately, Mark wasn't able to get the tub out in time to make it into the truck for the landfill run. i'm not sure if replacing the toilet in the backyard with a bathtub is a step up or down on the scale of redneckery. either way, this is where we are.
we ran into a few bumps this week already: the shower head arm is completely corroded into place and we havent been able to remove it yet. we are going to have to tweak the copper piping. we have yet to find a tub handle that will work with the existing pipe arrangement. the tub drain pipes broke when the old tub was taken out. and replacing the tub has been a complete pain: from removing the old one, to getting the new one to fit into the just-the-right-size space, to figuring out what to do with the fact that once we got it all leveled up it wasnt actually sitting on the floor since the floor isn't level, it was just one headache after another.
so at the end of our first week and the long Labor Day weekend, this is where we're at: all the old stuff has been demo'd out. the new tub is in and set and level and just waiting for plumbing.
the construction mess has been cleaned and contained back to the point where it is manageable and the rest of the house is mostly unaffected again. we are still excited about this project. we are still having fun with it. we can't wait to keep going.
trips to Home Depot: this week - 4. total - 4.
trips to Ace: this week - 2. total - 2.
times Amanda has cried over this project: this week - 1. total - 1.
times Amanda has cried in Home Depot: this week - 0. total - 0.
days until Thanksgiving: 86.
1 comment:
I say you sink that tub in your backyard and make it into a fountain... Also I am so excited to see the final product and the rest of the adventure along the way!
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