Update July 3

Waiting for the dust to settle . . .

I'm sitting here typing, waiting on Pizza Hut to answer their phone. Too tired to cook. That's probably the biggest problem with rehabs . . . no time or inclination to cook. Maybe that's why we don't lose weight. Eating junk food while rehabbing also makes you tired. Sigh.

Got a LOT accomplished today. Rich started with the electrical, diagnosing where the power was coming into the bathrooms, what else it was connected to, and how to disengage it from everything else and get it to its own power supply back to the panel. We'll have to check with electrician friends, but we think you can put all the bathroom stuff on one GFCI breaker now. If not, we'll have to re-do, but that's the plan. He worked on that until it was just too dang hot, even WITH the gorgeous weather.

Got rid of all the extra mortar bed junk, shards of tile, and EXCESS nails from the old master shower pan, and started framing for the laundry alcove. It should be a bit interesting to see how it all turns out in the end. I might have to get a bit creative with the flooring to make sure there's enough of a curb to keep water contained in the event of a spill. Luckily, there's the drain line from the old shower to keep the water going away from the rest of the house.

Then got to smashing all the floor tile in the guest bath. As I've mentioned before, the installers of the vinyl on top of the brown/brown/white/tan mosaic tile from the sixties had to have used superglue to put the vinyl down, so we had to peel it back first and then attack with a hammer. Rich figured out a technique that worked in the master shower stall . . . hit each corner joint with a hammer and the whole entire tile empire comes crashing down. Seems to work well for the floor, too, just not the crashing down part, what with it already being on the ground and all. He got lucky with a few sections that were still welded to the mesh backing, so he tugged, grunted and pulled and got a couple of them to come up in big chunks. Got to even see some of our own fireworks as the sledgehammer created sparks against the tile and wire mesh!

Then came the rest of the seabird tile/almond 4x4s on Wonderboard in the tub surround. With not too terribly much effort, we got the panels down mostly completely intact. Now I'll have to spend about 3 hours pulling out all the EXCESS nails again in the stall.

The guest bath floor is now just the old subfloor, 1x5ish's on a 45 degree angle to the joists. All the tar paper, nails, mortar, sand, wire mesh, mosaic tile, vinyl backer and vinyl is all gone! Now I can start prepping the floor with new tar paper, determining how high my final floor needs to be to meet the toilet flange, and planning the floor design for the bath. YAY!!!! CONstruction!!!

Tomorrow will be more DEconstruction, with dealing with more electrical lights, sockets, etc. Most of the old switchplates are nylon with nylon screws that disintegrate when you try to unscrew them, so I'm thinking all of them will have to be replaced, along with the actual switches and outlets. We have to figure out where the lights will go, and we probably have to tackle the kitchen floor and all the wonders and joys it holds for us. Maybe we'll even commit more hardwood sin if we're really industrious tomorrow.

VERY productive day. Tired, covered in dust (went through 2 particulate masks today), dirt, and probably some blood somewhere. Gonna go shower so we can do it again tomorrow. First thing, we go to the dump to unload more of the shower tile, the seabird motif tile, and some of the cardboard boxes that the cabinets came in. THEN we work. (And yes, the dump is open tomorrow--at least there's two citizens that are very happy about that!)