A Date with My Demo Man

TJ is getting into this full bore.

We've got just over two weeks until our contractor starts, and TJ has taken it upon himself to organize and do the entire new master bath rip out. We are going down to studs in what was the old laundry room. 

Door that leads to kitchen.

Wall that will have tub.

He thought through and set up the dust screens to the kitchen and our bedroom, so we and our housemates don't live in demo or construction dust. He added a great dust exhaust system by tying our shop vac into the old laundry dryer exhaust:

...and then yesterday he took down the whole ceiling.

We found the original higher ceiling above, which would've been terrific to go back to in a small bathroom, but as you see, in the 60's, they ran the upstairs bath plumbing right above the dropped ceiling.

and as I sit here blogging, he's inside .....

 ripping out a side wall.















When he uncovered the ceiling, we found some unexpected things:

The downside:
Inside the unused chase that we thought we could just remove (see the BEFORE pictures above where the tub is going), there was a huge beam (8x8)! It probably supports the whole back of the older house, along the wall it shares with our bedroom so it cannot be removed. So to stand up in our tub, our contractor will have to raise this beam up 7 inches and support it on large vertical beams inside the wall. Studs alone won't do. Sigh, that will be more costly.

The wall board covers the discovered 8x8 beam.

But the good news is that we also can see that our bedroom roof rafters sit deep into that same chase as one area. That means venting our fan will be an almost straight run out and much, much easier than we thought. It's usually an involved affair to find a way to vent moist air out of a room in the middle of a first floor of a three story house.

Aaah, remodeling. Ain't It a mixed bag? It giveth in one place while it taketh away in another!

As I listen to the noises inside, I will tell you straight off, I'd be right at TJ's side in old jeans and a ventilated mask, my wrecking bar in hand, discovering and prepping the room. But a pinched cervical nerve is keeping me here.




Damn! What a great date that would've been with my Demo Man.