One Room Challenge Part 2: Demo Day
Demo day was a lot of fun! I thoroughly enjoy doing demolition work! There's something very empowering about using tools and your own strength to create a clean slate. I usually crank up the tunes and and get cracking... in this case quite literally cracking! The demolition for this project was fairly simple and we used tools that can either be rented or purchased from your local home improvement store. Along with some of the tile, we removed the counter top and vanity, the old fluted trim, the closet door, medicine cabinet, and toilet tank in the first demolition session. We didn't want to remove the lighting until after the drywall repair are completed because it is the only source of light in the room. The exterior door will also be replaced by professional door contractors.
The old particle board vanity and laminate counter top. You can also see the embedded soap dish and toothbrush holder. They will have to go.
Vanity Removal
The old vanity came out fairly easily. The hardest part was removing the counter surface. The counter top was laminate and was screwed into the vanity. Once the countertop was removed, we unscrewed the vanity from the wall and disposed of it. The old vanity was 31" tall, which was fairly typical for vanities in the 1960's. However, the new vanity will be 36" tall with the counter surface installed.
The counter measures at 31", which is 5" shorter than the new vanity.
Tile & Trim Removal
Because the new vanity is about 5" taller than the old vanity, we needed to remove several of the tiles above the vanity that were touching the ceramic toothbrush holder and soap dish embedded in the the tile. Then we planned to replace just the tiles we removed. I bought enough wallpaper to cover the wall from the ceiling to the tile line, which was about 42" around most of the room. The trim came off the wall easily, but we were also concerned that the trim removal might damage some tiles because it was grouted in place next to the tile.
All of the tile has to go. You can see here that everything is connected with a wire mesh, making it very difficult to remove just 1-2 tiles.
The Best Laid Plans...
As the great poet Robert Burns once said, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry..." or something like it. Our project was no exception! For starters, the tiles above the vanity did not come off with out breaking the tiles next to them. So, we decided to remove all of the wall tile on the vanity side. I'm glad we decided to do this because we realized that there was some water damage to the exterior wall on the vanity side and this offered is the opportunity to make those repairs.
Everything is gone!! Time to start rebuilding!
However, I only ordered enough wallpaper to cover 1/2 of the wall. I immediately reached out to the showroom and asked if I could order another double roll from the same dye lot. This is important because a new dye lot can cause the color to vary significantly. As luck would have it, they were still working from the same batch!! In the meantime, I was coming up with a plan "B", which would have been to only cover the wall behind the vanity. In the end, it all worked out and the bathroom will be fully covered in wallpaper as I had initially envisioned!
The original wall paper! It actually had zero yellow in it!! What?!?!