Demo Day 2

Welcome back!

If you're tuning in today we're picking up where we left off yesterday and I'm back with another progress report on Day 2 of demo which I promise will be a lot less dramatic. Or not.

To refresh your memory - and mine - here's what the place looked like when we moved in:

And here's where we left off at the end of Day 1:

After waking up with a much better attitude, a renewed sense of determination, and a body that was surprisingly not as sore as I expected, we still had 1/2 of the hardy backer to demo and we also needed to remove all the hardy backer screws (all those little dots in the foreground of the above photo). Can you say #overkill?

Demoing the remaining hardy backer only took an hour or so and when we were finally finished, we started sweeping up the bits and pieces of thin set (leftover from the tiles) in preparation for our most tedious task yet...removing all.those.screws!

All 8 million of them:

We had a few options to remove them: use an angle grinder and shear off the screw head (I didn't like the sparks), use a crowbar and rip them out (I didn't like the splintering the wood doing this), or dig out the thin set in the screw head and drill them out.

We went with the latter. Mainly because I'm an OCD crazy person. So we spent the next few hours using our Dremel to clean out the screw head and used our Ryobi Drill to pull them out. 

One would Dremel and the other would drill and after a few hours, all the screws had been removed. It was by far the most absurd and time consuming method to remove the screws, but after the physically demanding work of demo Day 1, it was a welcomed change of pace. We turned on Pandora, worked in small sections, and got-er-done!

So much better! 

See that blue bucket above? We decided to use that bucket for all the screws we removed just to see how high we could fill up. Whoever laid the hardy backer went #buckwild with screws so we knew going in, there'd be a lot, but we were still shocked to see that nearly 3/4 of the bucket was filled by the end of the whole ordeal. #insaneinthemembrane

After removing all the screws, we used the shop vac to do a once over on the floors and took the vacuum hose to the perimeter. After vacuuming and putting our tools away, we could officially close the books on our 2nd day of demo. We finished Day 2 on a high note (and with a much better attitude) and guess what?! 

Dad was right. #dadforthewin

We did it. And we were proud of ourselves for doing it.

Not to mention the $1700 savings was a nice little incentive too.

Next week I'll be back to share the progress we've made on the house since the floor demo was completed and there will be a few more tutorials coming your way too! We're closing off a doorway, widening another, we finally chose a paint color, and we're one step closer to laying our floors. Things are happening so fast around here...follow along on Instagram so you don't miss a thing!

Demo Day 1

You guys!!

We've made great headway over the last two weekends, but man…demo kicked our butts!

If you follow me on Instagram then you probably saw some real-time snaps of all the demo action but today I’m here to break it all down a little further. It was 1.5 days of sheer #bloodsweatandtears. 

Literally.

For those of you just joining in on the fun, here’s the abridged version: we bought a house (our first), we locked ourselves out twice (#facepalm), invited you in for our empty house tour, ripped out the old baseboards, and two weekends ago, demoed the heck out of the tile floors in preparation for new laminate flooring. We took it easy over Easter weekend but we're right back in the thick of things renovation-wise and I wanted to catch you all up.

Before we begin, let's take a look at where we started:

The tile wasn't bad. But it wasn't all that good either. This picture actually makes it look way better than it really was. Up close the tile is was damaged, uneven, and dated. It had to go.

My Dad showed up first thing Saturday morning (Day 1) to lend a hand. Basically he’s the dude to show us newbies how it’s done. And showed us, he did.

He used a Makita hammer drill thingy (totally legit name) and took that hammer thingy to a tile in the middle of the room. Once he got that first tile all broken out, he started taking them out one by one in rows. Before I knew it, he had little pathways of removed tiles all over the place.

I asked why he was making all sorts of rows (instead of starting at one end of the room and working towards the other – like I would’ve done!) and he said he was removing the tiles this way (and leaving sections of 2 wide) to “relieve the joints” of pressure. Once he had all the little pathways removed, we could go back and the tiles in those “2 tile wide” sections would pop out whole because the pressure from surrounding tiles had been removed.

At least someone knew what they were doing. That someone wasn't me.

My Dad and S took turns working that hammer tool but I steered clear…that sucker freaked me the heck out. Not to mention the flying tile particles. Uh-uh. No thank you. Wear your safety glasses, folks. I took my broom and stood in the corner #likeagirl #aintnoshameinmygirlygame. Work gloves on. Ear plugs in. Broom and bucket in hand. I was the best sweeper and tile picker-upper you ever did see.

By the end of Day 1 we were able to get all the tile removed (except the kitchen & laundry closet) and about half the hardy backer. Not bad.

Here's a little end of day progress shot:

How did I feel at the end of Day 1, you ask? Not good. I was pretty cranky too. #justkeepingitreal

To say we were exhausted by the end of Day 1 would be a complete understatement. We felt like we had been run over by a mac-truck. Five times. The work itself was easy - but it was tedious, loud, and physically demanding. But we both knew this going in. It was the one project we were both afraid of and aprehensive to tackle ourselves - not that we couldn't do it - we just didn't want to. We knew it would be labor intensive and we even tossed around the idea to hire this part out but after receiving a quote for $1700 to demo and dump, we decided that it was worth the $1700 savings to do it ourselves. 

So we did…

But that doesn't mean I was happy about it - haha! 

By the end of the day I  looked at what was still left to do - demo the rest of the hardy backer, remove all.the.screws, and dump the debris - and threw my hands up in the air all dramatic like and told S to call someone in to finish it up. #itsmypartyandillcryifiwantto

But we didn’t.

My Dad gave me a little pep talk about how we could do it and how proud we'd feel when we finished and blah, blah, blah, so I downed a few Ibuprofen and I put my aching body and pouty attitude to bed.

Come back tomorrow to see how Demo Day 2 went - #spoileralert - much better and much faster. #thankyoujesus

How to Remove Baseboards

We’re finally all moved in but when I say “moved in” what I really mean is that we’re living with only the barest of necessities – our mattress/box spring on the floor, what little clothing the closets will hold, and the couch – although I’ll argue right now, that even the couch is unnecessary because after a full day of work, a night of demo, all we really care about is getting our aching bodies to bed!

It still feels so surreal that this is in fact – OUR HOME! #somebodypinchme

The rest of our belongings are being stored in the garage while we rip out the trim, baseboards, close off a doorway, widen another, and slap on a coat or twelve of paint in preparation for what will undoubtedly be the biggest improvement this place has seen in several years – new laminate flooring!

First order of business in a mile-long to-do list: removing the baseboards.

Aside from paint, adding thick, beefy baseboard and trim will without a doubt give you the biggest bang for your buck. Guaranteed. It’s an investment I will never regret and continue to make in every house we own after this.

The process to remove baseboards is actually quite simple and very straight forward. We had a general idea how to get-er-done but decided to watch a few You Tube videos beforehand just to help us feel extra confident going in.

Our house has 3 different styles/sizes of baseboards throughout (#iwishiwasjoking) but these steps will work regardless of what style or size baseboard you’re working with. But first – tools:

·         Gloves

·         Utility knife

·         Pry bar – (we used this one and this one)

·         Putty knife (optional)

·         Hammer or rubber mallet

·         Piece of scrap wood

·         Pliers (optional)

Step 1: Score

Using your utility knife, score along the entire top, bottom, and edges (where it meets the door trim) of the baseboard. This will help detach the baseboard from the wall a bit and score through any caulking that was used to fill any visible gaps after installation or numerous layers of paint over the years.

Step 2: Wedge

Starting at one end, use your mini pry bar or putty knife and wedge it into the top of your baseboard by hammering the tool with your hammer or rubber mallet into the top of the score line.

Step 3: Pry
Once the tool has been wedged down between the wall and baseboard you can pry the baseboard off the wall two different ways or a combination of the two. You can either pull the pry bar towards you and keep doing this all the way down the entire length – for extra-long runs of baseboard, we used the 2 pry bar method – one to use as we went along and the other to stick between wall and baseboard where we had just pried off to give us leverage and space between wall and baseboard going forward.

You can also pry the baseboard off by pushing your pry bar towards the wall – but always use a scrap piece of wood when you do this so as not to damage your walls, but to also evenly distribute the force across the piece of scrap wood.

If you didn’t score well enough the 1^st time and notice that as you pry, you’re also peeling off layers of your sheet rock, go back and score those areas again or cut the base board away from the peeling wall.

Continue working your way down the entire length of baseboard, wedging and prying.

Step 4: Remove

Once the entire length of baseboard has been pried off the wall, now all you have to do is remove it. In some cases, you might have to tug, pull, wrestle with it to get it out of a tight spot but this is why wearing gloves is necessary! The baseboard should have been attached with a combination of caulk (along top/bottom seams) and nails so be careful of the nails when pulling the baseboard out.

Step 5: Clean-Up

 After your baseboard has been removed, there are still a few things left to do. You’ll want to remove any nails left along the baseboard line so that when you go to install new baseboards or re-install the ones you just removed they are able to sit flush against the wall. In some cases, you may need to scrape off the excess calking along the wall or floor where the baseboard was attached for the same reason. Since we’re installing bigger baseboards and removing the old tiles, we didn’t bother doing this.

If you’re planning to re-install your old baseboards, be sure to mark them with a corresponding number or location so that you know where they go when you re-install them.

Step 6: Take Pre-Caution

If you’re not planning to re-install your old baseboards, be sure to either remove all the nails from the baseboard with a hammer/pliers or bend them down. That way, anyone grabbing a pile of baseboards to discard isn’t getting nicked or poked by rogue nails. I’d also recommending taking a shop-vac to the perimeter to catch any stray nails or wood shards.


And that's it! It took us only a few hours to remove all the baseboards throughout the house and it was the first step in the bigger renovation plan we've got going on over here. Keep tabs on us via Instagram for real-time house updates and as always, check back here for the full progress reports as it happens! Thanks for stopping by and I'll be back again this week with our whole-house to-do list...and boy is it a long one.