Demo is done

Finally....demo is done. On the last house I flipped, trying to save as much money as possible, I did all the demo work myself.  It is hard and dirty work but nothing that my sledge hammer and I can't handle.  In the kitchen I demoed the cabinets, floor and took down a wall.  In the living room and family room I ripped up thick green shag carpeting and tore down old dark wood paneling.  I pulled out the bathroom vanities and peeled up the linoleum floor.  All basic things that I could handle, problem is...it took me 5 days by myself.  In my book that's 4 days too long.   It actually ended up costing me money to do the work myself.  Demo is one of the easier things to do but it also doesn't cost very much to hire out.  On my current project I learned from my past mistake...kinda!

We closed on this property at 9:30 AM and by 10 AM I had the dumpster delivered and my crew in the house working away.  As you can see from the "before" shots this house was in pretty decent shape.  There aren't any structural issues to deal with, no walls to come down and no carpet to rip up.  Basically everything that's old comes out and what's new goes in.  My plan was to demo the kitchen, basement, and both bathrooms on the first day.  For the most part everything was moving along smoothly.  In the basement the paneling came off the walls, the drop ceiling came down and the carpet came up....all with out issues.  In the kitchen we carefully took the cabinets off the wall and removed the appliances (sold the cabinets for $200 and the stove for $75 on craigslist), ripped up three layers of linoleum floor and the slowly rotting 1/4 inch plywood under that on top of the sub-floor.

After lunch my crew headed upstairs to tackle the bathrooms.  It seemed to me that they were all (all four of them that is) focusing on what will become the master bathroom and trying to avoid the hallway bathroom...and for good reason.  The house was built 63 years ago and back then when they tiled a bathroom they tiled the tub and shower surround as well as 4 feet up all the walls throughout the bathroom.  Beautiful old subway tile was used in houses that are older that this one and I believe if they can be salvaged at all they should always be.  But my house has the standard 4x4 tile in a yellow and black pattern.  The yellow and black pattern is a lot better then some of the different variations I've seen; pink and white, pink and blue, teal and yellow, avocado green and black just to name a few.  But in this market to have my house stand out from the rest and hopefully fetch top dollar it needed to come down.  Taking down tile can be a very quick and easy job or it can be the worst thing in the world to get down.  It all depends on how and when it was installed.  The tile back splash in the kitchen popped off very easily by simply using a pry bar.  Or, and that's a big OR, if it was installed in a bed of mortar or worse...concrete, it can be the biggest pain to get down (especially if you would like to save the floor and tub).   When I hired these guy I made no attempt to hide the fact that these tiles were probably installed by using wire mesh and 2 plus inches of concrete.   They insisted that this wouldn't be a problem and all would be fine.  So after basically finishing the master bath they got the toilet and vanity out of the bathroom and it was obvious to see that these were set in a bed of concrete.  Adding that to the fact that it was about 4 pm and they were tired they all instantly tried to convince me that I should keep the tile and if they took it down they would destroy the floor and tub.  (The previous owners installed a new tile floor, not one that I would choose, but in good enough condition that I wanted to keep it.)  At that point I'm not going to force them to do it and knowing that they were all tired and already didn't want to I knew they would have done a sloppy job anyway.  I was getting a little tired too and maybe, just maybe,  for a brief minute I started to agree with them.  So I cut down what I was paying them and sent them on their way.

The next day my wife came with me to the house and we went over all the options on what to do in the bathroom.  Of course after a full nights sleep and my head back on straight it was obvious that something had to be done with this tile.  We thought first we should try and save the tile, re-glaze it white and hope for the best.  We chose a small section behind the vanity and marked off a test area.  After putting a first coat on it seemed as though it had a chance to work but the question in my mind was, would it ever look great?  I have come to the conclusion that when you paint something that is old and outdated you have just that... a painted version of an old and out dated item.  When you paint old kitchen cabinets you get painted old kitchen cabinets, same for paneling, and now same for tile.  I think the tile might have had the best odds of looking like new again but Kitchen and Baths sell homes.  So it had to come down.

I got out my heavy duty hammer drill and a tile chisel and when to town.  I thought if I could just get the tile off the walls maybe I could leave the concrete up and beadboard over it.  So a day and a half later I had all the tile down and was left with a very uneven surface to try and cover up.  It was apparent that I would not be able to tile over it in the tub surround so I went back at it completely tearing down all the concrete and mesh.  Once I got all that down I tried to cover the rest with the beadboard but since it was so uneven I was having a hard time getting it to stick.  So back at it once again - everything had to go.  In the end I got everything down that I needed down and I was able to save the tub and floor.  With all the demo being finally completed I  realized that 80% of it took me 1 day the other %20 took 4 more.... The good thing was that since the rest of the house was opened up I had an electrician and a plumber working away while I was hating life tearing the concrete down.

Below a few photos of the demoed kitchen, basement and both bathrooms.  Notice the progression in the tiled bathroom.

Kitchen

Check out the sweet wallpaper we found behind the cabinets!

Basement

Lots of illegal hidden outlets and junction boxes with random wires going nowhere!

Bathrooms

I guess I never got a photo of the bathroom walls with the tile down but the concrete still up.  Maybe I just didn't want to remember that!