More Bathroom Demolition + Renovation Surprises

We’re continuing our work on the basement bathroom renovation. A complete renovation, that is.  Starting with such an UG-LY before as we’ve had…

You need to completely renovate right?

We’ve taken out the toilet, shower stall, and started on the wall tiles, so now we’re up to the rest of the room and the floor.

We hammered away at the wall .. and for clarification when I say we I mean the hubs… Down came the grey and pink striped flowered tiles. I wonder what year these were put in?

And since that will all be coming out, we’ve gotten to see the foundation wall behind it. Remember this is in the basement of our 113 year old house.

I see a little bit of it here.

Looks like the 2x4s will have to go too, there’s mold 🙁

But we knew that was coming since the floor tiles were coming up. {This is a before picture of the same corner}

There used to be a long mirror on the wall. This photo was from the day of the inspection.

But the mirror came down too and look what we found underneath. Flowered wallpaper, nice. I’ve kept some for the scrapbook 🙂

But that wasn’t all we found. Check this out.

Open light junction boxes.

Oh my word! It’s worse than the cardboard holding up the shower floor.

This is not how a light box is supposed to look. Let alone behind a long mirror. It’s like someone decided “Let’s leave the wires exposed and put a mirror over this to cover it up.”

I’m shaking my head in disbelief

Once that mirror was down, we got to take down the tile along that wall where the toilet and vanity used to be.

And of course that lead to the floor coming out. Some of it was easy to get up my contractor my husband told me, some of it was not. So he borrowed a hammer thing to get it out.

Hubs, leave a comment and tell the readers what you used to take out the tile that was set on the concrete will you? 🙂

Look, more foundation wall.

We’ve contemplated leaving those walls up and putting wainscoting over them, but ultimately decided they needed to go and we’d start fresh.

Floor almost gone…

Close up of floor. See the cement floor? We’re still not sure what we’ll do with it. We’ve discussed polishing it or something, but we’re up in the air. We have to get all the adhesive off of it first and see what we are working with.

With that part done, we’ve got lots more to do like taking down more walls, figuring out what we’ll do in terms of flooring, get an electrician in. Lots of decisions but it’s all very exciting.

I’ve started a bathroom inspiration board on Pintrest, come see it here and of course you know there’s more bathroom renovation up next. See you then!