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