That being said, we are going to the TSO again on Thursday, because they are playing Beethoven's Fifth and there are a lot of things I would be willing to cram into a day for that.
Such as, for random example, walking into my brand new (to me) house and looking at my erstwhile bathroom through the den:
Obviously, I am starting from the middle of the story — sorry. Let me back up.
...
Uhm, we bought a house.
The strangest thing about buying a house is — well. There are a lot of strange things, actually, and I think I was officially declared The Difficult Customer Of The Week at my bank branch last week, so ... maybe that's not the best phrase. Anyway, the odd thing about buying a house (and lots of people do this too, it's not just us) is, you buy this house. And you buy a house you like, because obviously you don't spend that much money on something you don't like. Or even love. So you buy this house that you like, or even love, and so obviously there can't be anything too excruciatingly distasteful about it because otherwise you wouldn't like (or love) it, but — you buy this thing, and the first thing you do is to take everything down. It's a little bit insane.
The bathroom did not always look like this.
In fact, it used to look like this:
Clean. Functional. A bit small, but in full working order, albeit with a few oddities, like — why is the pedestal for the sink not flush to the wall? (Because it was probably installed by the seller's son-in-law. This answer is going to come up a lot, by the way.)
Unfortunately, I can't really show you the rest of what the bathroom looked like pre-reno, because that was the only picture I could take. I backed up, used my wide-angle lens, but wide-angle lenses are useless when all you've got is a straightaway. There is literally no more of the bathroom, no extra space hiding behind the door or something. No. The open space in that bathroom is, literally, the width of the door. And if you think that's nice and roomy, I suggest you go stand in a doorframe and imagine that there's a wall trapping you in it.
Precisely. So we're expanding the bathroom, the only way possible: into the den. Hence, lack of wall.
On the first day, we took out the plastic surround lining the tub. I hate those things — when we were looking at houses, I would press them and some of them would be spongy. Now there are a lot of textures possible in bathrooms, but spongy is not a good one. So we got rid of it, and while we were at it we got rid of the shower wall holding up the shower head, too. It was blocking the window.
And my price for all of that that was spending a day and a half chiselling adhesive (those white circles) out of the wall.
Well. Marcus helped too.
Meanwhile, some very obliging friends took down the aforementioned wall.
Along the way, we dug through some very entertaining history. That bathroom used to be a darker blue. And before that, white. And before that, floral wall paper, and before that, it had linoleum tile. I know all this because we ripped all of that up. (You can see the various sampling above the sink in that picture. By the way, that sink is no longer there, either.)
By the end of Day 2 — otherwise known as Superbowl Sunday — we had dismantled most of the bathroom.
(Actually, that picture is inaccurate. By the end of the day we had taken out the wood frame as well, so it's an utterly open space. I didn't get a chance to take a photo, though.)
After two days, our house was lighter by this much:
No, that's not all bathroom stuff. In fact, only maybe about a third is (that white stuff on the right is the tub surround). The rest ... well. I'll tell you that story tomorrow. It has the words "DEATH TRAP!" in it.
It will be worth it in the end! (Or so the home reno TV shows keep telling me!)
ReplyDeleteAnd hey, we are going to the symphony on Thursday, too!