April 1, Our strategy is to demo everything first and complete the rooms that we need, in order to officially move in. We have been living with my in-laws for the last few months, during our home search and now renovation. We are so grateful to have had a place to stay, but are anxious to move in and give them their peaceful house back.
At this point, we don’t have water in the new house. We are running back and forth to use the bathroom (luckily my in-laws only live 5 minutes away) and we have a bucket of water, hand wipes, and sanitizer handy to wash our hands. At some point, in the four years our house was sitting vacant, the pipes burst. The damage was “cleaned” but the pipes were still broken when we bought it. Getting into the walls and at those pipes is one of our main priorities. We need to fix the broken pipes and get the water back on!
Most of day two was spent demoing the master bathroom. It’s small but on suite, so it’s important that it becomes a highly functional space without lacking in style. We are developing a routine of spending the last half hour, before we go back to my in-laws, to do a little cleaning and talk about future design plans. We make changes to the original plans based on what we discover during demo. For example, I had picked out a floor and shower tile before we closed but looking at it, in the gutted space, it appears too busy and not the tranquil clean space I’d imagined. So, it’s back to the drawing board. As we move through the house, we can tell that the previous owners (and the original builders) had their own way of MacGuyvering the space to fit their needs. A lot of time we find ourselves saying to each other, “Why in the hell would they do that?”
Here are a few pictures of the master bath before demo and after.
Shower before demo. Eww, gross.
Oddly the vanity is brand new, so we’ll be hanging on to it. The top wasn’t even glued on! Also, so much tile.
The holes are from the old towel bars they glued into the wall.
Taking it down to the studs, to get at the busted pipes.