The Carnage - Video

Alright, well, here's the story...the destruction of the bathroom!! We had a really nice weekend, it was relaxing, and Brian was HOME almost the whole day (short bit of work to do only!). So rare and wonderful. We actually spend a good part of our afternoon working on a budget.

Because of the excessive amount of tools Brian moves in and out of the house daily...and because we've been robbed (from his truck) way too many times, we would like to get our portion of the house rental ready - that way we could purchase or rent elsewhere, with a big 2 car garage etc. So we're slowly working toward that goal, we would like to not have to sell this house, because it's such a good money maker, being a duplex.

Three main areas needing attention, Kitchen, Bathroom, and Trim. - We don't have enough money for the kitchen, so we began pricing the bathroom out, item by item, deciding what we want to do in there. We figured out we could do a new tub, new sink, tile floor and tile surround.

We've been having problems with our tub drain, and it's not able to be snaked (something wrong - old pipes), for awhile, but Sunday morning was the end. It stopped draining TOTALLY. Brian tried again to snake it etc. It wasn't happening.

So we bumped up the bathroom remodel from June, to NOW:-) I know Brian was wishing this happened on Saturday, giving him that one more day to work on it. We can only afford materials, not subcontractors, so he is doing everything himself, which will be in between all his other work obligations.

Brian went to Lauren's to shower, I got the kids ready for church, I loaded them in the car and left the house to the first sounds of the sledgehammer. The goal was to get the old tub & tile out, and the new tub in, and the durrock up (the underlayment for the new tile). All in one day...

Coming home from chruch, this is what we saw: !! I wasn't planning ahead, obviously, so this is as close to a "before" pic as you will get, if you have never seen our bathroom. Notice how large the vanity is, making the entryway very narrow (something we aim to correct).

A hole cut in the floor...you can see Brian down there, fixing the plumbing

It was a lot of hard hard work! The tiles were cemented, literally, to the wall.

Now everything's out, it's time to cut out the sub floor! (Apparently tile cannot go down on that diagonal stuff, Brian says, so I believe him:-)

Holes in floor, everywhere!! Or 50+ year old tub was cast iron and a beast to get out of there. Brian can be grateful I'm so super strong and helpful;-). Sub floor was ready to be laid under the tub for the installation...

Issue #1: floor went down nicely, tub, almost in place, when...Brian noticed the new tub had a crack in it. It was about 10 minutes after 8pm...which is 10 mins after Lowes closes. That means we're done working for the night. Booo! The new tub is hanging out like this, until it can be exchanged. We made a plank to cover the hole, so we can still reach the toilet.

We're ready for that tile!...Some good news, we purchased everything we needed, except the tile itself, we saved 10% on our whole order, and we are under budget! Wahoo! We still have to decide on the tile...once the sink is delivered we'll have a better idea of what colour direction we want to go. Two frontrunner choices are slate or travertine. ? Who knows what we'll decide. Leaning towards travertine at this point, we think!