Master Bath Renovation Part Two

It's been about four weeks and we're almost done with the demolition.  Every time I think, "whew, we're done tearing everything out," I realize that there is more to do.  I was out of town for a week, but Husband toiled away without me.

See where we started in Part One.

Husbands have the nastiest jobs.  We pulled the shower walls down and found the cause of the water leak.

Someone had previously done some work on the shower and cut out the shower liner.  We contacted the previous owner and she told us that she hired someone to replace it.  Unfortunately, he was an unethical contractor and didn't do what he was hired to do.  So, no liner causes leaks.  You can see in the picture above where it was cut.  The whole liner fold up the wall several inches like it does in the back and on the right side.  

Husband pulled up the wood floor to expose the rotted plywood underneath.

Then, rather than take all of the studs out, he cut the bottoms off and removed the rotted part of the stud, plus the 2x4 that the studs rest on.

Cutting out the rotted plywood underlayment.

All the studs hovering in mid air.

Rebuilding the studs.

To attach the 2x4's to the concrete floor, we used these 22 hammer gun things.  They literally shoot the nail through the wood and into the foundation.

Nail bullets.

The doorway on the left is framed so that we can put drywall over it.

All of the rotted wood is gone and wall studs repaired.

I'm constantly cleaning because I can't stand working in a mess.  I think every contractor should have a cleaner whose job it is to clean up constantly.  All of the contractors that have done work for me just have piles of junk laying everywhere.  I'd go on a cleaning frenzy when they left for the day.

While I was gone for the week, Husband framed our closets.

Voila.  Closets.  It doesn't look like much, but it was a whole week of work.  There will be no actual wall between them, but we have some IKEA cabinets that will be in the center and will divide the one space into two.

Ugh.  There is no easy way to take up tile flooring.  We tried several tools and I watched several tutorials that claimed "the easy way".  I hate to break it to ya'...there is no easy way.  In the picture above, he's using an air hammer with a wide bit.  This breaks the tile into little pieces and they fly all over the place.  Part of the tile has thinset under it.  It's the hardest to get up and, even though we got the tile up, the thinset is still stuck.  We're looking into renting a jackhammer with a blade on it to scrape it off, but our local tool rental place doesn't have one.

These were my tools of choice to remove the section of tile that was installed with a tile mastic.  It comes up easier and in bigger chunks, but most of the mastic is still stuck.  We have one section of tile left to do.  Then demolition is complete.

We bought this vacuum after we had pulled down most of the drywall and nearly choked to death on the drywall dust.  Theoretically, it sucks the dust from the air, but I'm not convinced yet.

One way we've been able to save a little money is by reusing the wood that we've taken out so that we won't have to buy any new lumber.  In fact, we're going to have a lot leftover.  We've carefully removed wall studs and doorway headers and have used them to build the very few walls that are necessary in my new bathroom plan.

All the walls except one small pony wall to form the shower are completed.  We can't do that one until we've cut out the foundation for the curbless shower pan and the plumbing is in.

Go here for Part Three of my master bath renovation.