Awur Baffroom Advenchur, Part Free

Tub and terlet in hand, we had no more excuse for not starting the work on the bathroom itself, which meant tearing out all the old crappy things we didn't like, such as the old tub/shower, the terlet, the vanity and, eventually, the 80's above-sink makeup lights. (Oh, and the super crappy rigged doorknob setup, as pictured at right, the only explanation for which I can imagine is that some genius locked themselves out of the bathroom at some point and had to cut the original knob out of the door in order to get back in. Not to say that I haven't done nearly this very thing since moving in, but I at least had the good sense to climb in a window after failing to pick the lock from the other side of the bedroom door.)

The crappy shimmed up vanity was the first to go and was easy enough to remove. Its departure left a vanity-shaped section of wallpaper exposed, once again showcasing the half-assedness of one or more sets of the previous asshole owners of our home. (Can't really say I would have done things much differently, but that doesn't diminish their assholity.) We hauled all the bits of it out to the back deck, except for the cabinet itself,which I put in the garage for future incorporation into my super-cool garage tool bench setup.

Next up, we began the removal of the tub. We knew this would be tricky, because it's not like you can just pick up the tub and haul it out, what with it being drywalled into place, hooked into the plumbing and likely glued to the subflooring beneath. Not knowing the best way to otherwise do things, we decided the easiest method was to demo the whole thing using a sawsall. And this we did, being careful not to cut through studs and floor and wiring. It was slow going, one piece at a time, but, as you can see from the accompanying pictures, we took her out to the studs.

The truly unsettling part of all this, however, is that with each piece of tub we removed, we exposed another section of the inner walls of the bathroom and the evidence of a one time mouse occupation there. We saw no actual mice, but their leavings were numerous and disturbing. We were glad to have respirators, so as to breathe as little of the mouse-poo dust as we could. Previous owners, or perhaps the contractors that built the place, had tried to seal up a hole in the subflooring where the pipes entered the room from the crawlspace beneath our house, but some of the screening had been damaged or eaten through, allowing the mice access. The good news is that most of the subflooring looked pretty good, but there were a couple of spots that would need to be replaced.

Our overall plan was to replace the sections of subflooring we needed to, put down some concrete planking atop that, seal it, install the tub, put up more concrete planking around the tub, seal it too, patch some drywall, tile the walls above the tub, tile the floor, install the new toilet, install the new vanity and we'd be home free for a new bathroom. Of course, accomplishing all of the above would have taken us a goodly amount of time, even if things had run exactly to plan. Naturally, they haven't.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)