Day 2

Day 2 started with a bang. First order of business was to get the cast iron tub out of the room. Ugh. Our friend who helped us on day 1 was busy today with family coming to town. Not to worry! Another friend of ours, Richard, just happened to be in Auburn for the FL game. Caught him just on his way out of town and to paraphrase his response, he says "Sure, I'd LOVE to come help you move a 1000lb tub!"





After some head scratching, Richard came up with a nice idea of using some 2x4s and a crowbar to lever the tub out of its concrete trap enough for us to musle it into the center of the room, staged for moving out of the room. Then came the fun part. Realizing that we weren't going to be able to carry it all the way to the garage in one shot, we staged up some resting spots with some plywood and 1xs(so setting it down wouldn't scratch the finish). It was rough, but we managed to get it out to the driveway without too much trouble(my back might tell you a different story). Since it was a straight shot to the garage, we employed an appliance dolly and an old skateboard to improvise a cart to roll it the rest of the way. The tub was finally safely in the garage.

The tub skate:

After getting the tub out safely(and recovering) Richard headed back home to Atlanta and lunch with his wife. Thanks Rich!

I proceeded with the demolition of the rest of the room. The goal for day 2 was to have all the walls down to the studs.

Demolition for the rest of the room was all fairly easy. Yank the drywall off of the underlying plaster walls, then remove the plaster itself. Nothing too difficult, just very messy. Even with my keeping the door to the room closed as much as possible, there's still a layer of dust on just about everything in the house. Woohoo :). The toughest part of this job was removing the plaster from the exterior wall. The plaster was applied directly to the brickwork on the wall, so removing that took some effort. Most of it peeled away ok, but the plaster had adhered better in other places making it tough to remove. Our friend Allen helped out a lot by continously hauling the plaster waste outside so that we had room to work.

Notice the plaster on the brick wall.


At the end of the day, we were pretty much where we wanted to be. No more plaster.









Here's a look at the mess we've generated so far:

Plaster rubble:


Drywall, cabinets...etc:


Day 3 - The floor! This one is going to be rough. I have to remove the original tile, which isn't so bad. What's going to be tough is the 2" layer of concrete resting on the subfloor. Tackling that one is going to be a challenge.


Another challenge, when I get to drywall, is going to be the ceiling/wall joint. I'm hoping that I won't have to mess with the ceiling and I can just leave it in place. However, the existing plaster ceiling joint might get a little messy. It looks like wherever two surfaces met, they installed a metal lathe mesh to hold the plaster. I need to remove ALL the plaster from the walls in order for the new drywall to rest evenly on the studs, but I'm afraid that if I remove this metal lathe at the ceiling joint, I'm going to destroy part of the ceiling doing it, which I would prefer not to do. Still trying to wrap my brain around this one. Luckily I have a little bit of time before I have to solve this one.

Ceiling joint detail:


Oh, and lastly, in honor of the dearly departed houseguest, I thought I would post a picture of his final resting place behind the tub. RIP Mr. Opossum. You will not be forgotten.