“Promise us you won’t let anyone else demolish your bathroom,” our moms said. That was an easy promise to make and keep. I (Lucy) had the Friday before Labor Day off, so the Demo Moms (and Demo Dad) came over to demolish the John Deere green bathroom. They are heroes. By the end of the day, it was gutted to the studs. I think the volume of trash on our driveway exceeded the volume of the bathroom itself. All that is left is the window (which we put in because the old one was rotted through) and the ceiling, including the new ceiling light/fan/heater.
Before: The tub drained solely by leaking into the ground, the toilet was non-functional (though my dad did make it usable in January in case of emergency), the tiles were falling off the wall and the vanity was rotted through. Yes, if it worked, we would have lived with its green glory. But it didn’t…
In case you think the color is a trick of the light (thanks, Aunt Lynn and Mom for this):
So the self-named Demo Moms took crow bars and hammers to it! My mom shows off the first tile that was pulled off, joining all those that had fallen off. I made trash disposal runs and was the gopher. My dad made it so we could detach the sink without an explosion, disconnected the toilet and sink, and worked on insulating our electrical closet. The moms laughed as they destroyed the bathroom they despised:
My dad carried all of the fixtures out–this is the sink top (thanks to John for fixing the white balance on this pic):
John came home just in time to help my dad get the tub out, which was no easy feat. Turns out that under the tub there was several square feet of–ground. Manliness:
Feels so much better to have it one step closer to being done!
And the heroes rested. They’ll be glad to hear we’re hiring someone outside the family do the renovations.
On the same day, the flooring guys came to fix the huge bowed lump in our living room floor. In the process of putting in a new threshold, some paint came off, revealing some of the original wallpaper that had been painted over several times. It’s part of a scene including women in rose-pink dresses, trees, horses, and carriages:
And THAT was our labor day weekend.