First thing we tackled, aside from the wallpaper, was the bathroom. I could let Chrisje work the wallpaper together with her parents (to which I owe thanks, as the method we used to get the wallpaper from the walls is actually a trick we learned from them), while I prepared the bathroom removal. Actually emptying the bathroom started about the same time as the wallpaper removal, but little did we know what we were in for…

First all things not attached to anything had to go. It wasn’t that much though, it all fitted on one photo and we hadn’t even moved a thing:

Yes, those cupboards had already been emptied before, during the great clean-up operation, so it was just a matter of picking one up and taking it down the stairs to put them in my to-be work shed. In the not-so-near future I plan to use them to store all kind of small tooling stuff, but for now let’s just store them.

Next up, all the stuff that’s not so loose any more… Yeah, we’re talking about the tiles on the wall above and around the bath tub or the sink, the sink and the bath tub themselves, as well as the bidet and the toilet. And don’t forget about the rubbery stuff on the walls painted some kind of purple, or the ceiling made out of plastic shelves (a real shame we didn’t get a photo of those :(). Let’s get started!

The gear

Yet another one of those lists also known as “what you will need if you want to reproduce this at home”. Please note that Amazon links are affiliate links and are mostly provided to show you what to look for when you’re nosing around in your local DIY shop if you want them really fast 🙂 .

safety gear: gloves, ear muffs, glasses
wrench
screw drivers
hammer drill (I have one from Powerplus XQ. Most important part is to get one with at least regular SDS chuck, as a lot of the heavier drills and chisels come as such).

The method

Safety first! Always use gloves, ear muffs and glasses when necessary, better safe than sorry!

Before going at the walls we first removed the plumbing remains: toilet, sink, bidet.

For each one of them the procedure is the same:

For both hot and cold water there should be a small faucet sticking out of the wall, leading up to the actual faucet or the toilet (on the pictures above you can see them if you look closely on the right of the toilet or the bidet). Close it and let the water off.
Use the wrench to remove all piping from the small faucet onwards.
Remove the water locks.
Loosen any screws keeping the toilet, sink or bidet attached to the floor or the wall. They should now come off easily. Pick it up and away it goes.
Wash, rinse and repeat until you end up with a room that’s empty except for the bath tub itself, as that one had a brick encasing…

Next up is removal of that bath tub. I started with carefully removing some of the tiles below it, and then the bricks, in hope of not damaging the tub, or to keep damage to a minimum. For this, I used the hammer drill with a chisel and set it to hammer only. A little later the tub was free, only thing left was to remove the water lock. Onwards to a two men job, getting it down the stairs: as it’s made out of cast iron it didn’t go that easily. But by using ropes inventively and pure man power we succeeded!

With the tub gone, the room now was completely empty, but some work still had to be done before we could start building it up again: the ceiling, walls and floor still had to be tackled. More on that in a next post in the bathroom series :).

Chrisje friendly?

Those of you that know Chrisje might have sniggered when reading the title, but for those of you that don’t know her (yet), this section should give an idea of how difficult the action was, if it took some specific precautions or careful planning, or if you could dive in head first :).

Well, some things are, some not so. You can’t really do much wrong with demolition (except when you remove too much), but for some things you need to think a little before doing (for example the plumbing removal). On a scale of 1 to 10 I should give it a 6.

Afterthoughts

Suppose you have your own house, in need of a little loving. Suppose that same house is also ready to house you and all your belongings. What’s the first thing you’d tackle? What is going to be your first real “project”?