Bathroom Demo

It’s been slow-going on the bathroom/master bedroom project, even though we are t-minus 6 weeks until baby!  Mike has found the time to demo the room though and I thought I’d share because it already looks so different.

He started with the fixtures – vanity, lights, and toilet (we actually moved this to the downstairs powder room because it was brand new and both an elongated bowl and handicap height).  He then took the shower wall out, which just as we thought, opened the room up to seem twice as big.


After that, he took everything down to the studs and took out the tile floor.  The shower plumbing was built out from the wall (my thoughts are that they used a standard shower pan and this was built to fit), and so he removed that wall as well.  He’ll move the plumbing into the interior wall and we’ll build the shower the entire width of the room.

The biggest difference is the removal of the pocket door.  We’ve thought of every scenario to keep this as opened as it is now (even as crazy as just framing out the opening so the room is always open – even for two very comfortable married people like ourselves, that still seems weird), but the fact remains the best option is a pocket door even if it’ll close the room back up.


What you also can see to the left of the photo above is the first attempts at that wallpaper removal.  I spent a couple hours with a tiny garment steamer trying to remove the paper.  It seemed to work really well at first with the piece right next to the sliding exterior door (I’m thinking there was some moisture issues with the door that helped the paper come off easier), turned into a nightmare with the piece next to it.  The fact that I was using a dinky garment steamer didn’t help either.

I was getting completely discouraged and even thought of hiring it out (which I imagine would be extremely expensive, since it’s such an awful job), until Mike volunteered to help one night.  His method of removing all the leftover pieces from the area I already worked on was to wet it down as much as possible with a damp rag and peel it off.  I suggested a water bottle and our method was born.  Most of the room came off relatively easy, just a lot of spraying and a lot of patience, but of course when we got to the last wall, which happened to be the exterior wall, we had some hiccups.  A lot of water later, and we had all the wallpaper off and found ourselves in a very lilac hued room!


Like I said, one wall came off relatively easy, and the residue left behind is very minimal.


Then we had this corner, which just happened to be the spot we ended on.

You can see glue marks and drywall paper peeled off in some spots.  I have to sand the whole room and then I’ll do a primer coat with some Kilz, before Mike goes back to skim coat the more stubborn spots where the drywall peeled.  The reason for the Kilz first is to that the moisture from the skim coat doesn’t leas to bubbling and more peeling.  While it’s only necessary in the spots he’ll skim coat, I don’t want any residual wallpaper glue to seep through the paint, and I’m not feeling this lilac color, so I’m going to make sure it’s getting well buried!


   To add even more hiccups, there’s water damage under the window that will need to be replaced – the drywall and the window.  The windows are old and single paned and we knew we would be replacing them, we just planned to do them all at once in a couple years.  This one and the bathroom window are getting replaced during this phase because there’s water damage and we might as well!

We’re down to the wire before baby comes so I doubt we’ll be finishing this project before then, (Archer keeps catching bugs at the sitters and sharing with us knocking one of us out for a week before getting something new and sharing with the other parent), but we’re going to keep trekking and working on whatever we can!

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