The Shower (Part 1 of 4)

Disclaimer… I am interrupting this blog for a long 4 part series from the man of the house. There are way too many pictures for just one post, hence the 4 parts. Each part will be posted on a consecutive week nights (no promises on weekends) so that everyone can enjoy what I have to post and people don’t get to just skip to the end right away. This story is after all an adventure.

Disclaimer cont… Philippians is a book in the Bible that demonstrates what a Christian should look like to the world. Phil 2:14 it tells us to “do all things without grumbling or disputing”. I want to emphasize that while I may sound like I’m grumbling, I’m really just attempting to keep your attention while I tell my tale. So, without further ado… my story.

For the past month I have been struggling with a home improvement project. You see, when Jennifer and I bought the house we were less than thrilled with many of the features our home provides (i.e. the water heater in the pantry). We have had a game plan from the beginning that other than the small project here or there, we would remodel the bathroom first. Through God’s provision and Jennifer’s diligence at work, her bonus was able to pay for the materials to build a new shower. Mind you the bonus paid for the materials, not the labor. We couldn’t afford a professional, so we hired the one person who would work for what we’d pay… ME!

The old shower was a 3x3 square of smallness with water dripping out the spout. It wasn’t what you would want in a shower to say the least, and Jennifer is known to tell the whopper that when she was pregnant with the Triplets she almost got stuck. So the less than 9 sq. ft. that the shower provided was not enough. On top of all that smallness, the shower base sprouted a leak about 16 months ago which led to mold, mildew and three mushrooms growing in our bathroom. I attempted to caulk the problem away, but my attempt was futile, the problem was somewhere else and this gave us the motivation for a change.

So we got together a plan, picked out the tile, decided that we’d take out the bathtub that we only use to bathe the kiddos out and build our new 30 sq. ft. shower there. While building the shower we still had use of the “smallness” shower and the bathtub in the guest bathroom for the kids. Eventually we will redo the guest bathroom and put our master bath garden tub that we removed into the guest bathroom. Until that time, it is going to stay in our upstairs game room. (Yes that will have it’s own woes, but that is for another group of posts!)

So the first part of our series is Demolition! YEAH!

I had already looked through the attic to make sure that the wall I was working with was not a load bearing wall. I looked at the wall from the bathroom and determined that it was unlikely to be load bearing, but the best way to tell is if there are any cross beams in the attic attaching directly to the wall you are working on. There are other things you need to look at involving the construction of the house to be sure, but I was sure it wasn’t. So while I was up there I checked out the other stuff that was running through the walls (electrical, vent pipes, etc.) and had a good idea of what was there, but nothing helps more than pulling off sheetrock to find out what’s in a wall. Here comes the boom!

So I got to do the fun part of pulling the sheet rock off the wall. My original intent was to pull it off carefully and reuse it if possible, but it quickly became obvious that it was more trouble than it was worth. At that point using my pry bar and wrecking bar was a lot of fun. In retrospect, it’s a shame that all the demo work has to be done on the front end. It would be really nice if when you get mid way through a project and you get stuck, that you could take a big tool and break something to relieve the stress. I think I need a new shirt… “Got Aggression!”