Take a load off

...to the dump. That's what we did this weekend. We ripped, tore, shredded, bashed, broke, and pried a bunch of trash out of the house and then hauled it all away. This may have been the biggest pile of junk we hauled away to date. Most of it was construction materials, too. We finally got rid of the front and back doors from where they had been waiting in the side yard until we had a load worthy of a trip to the dump. But that's the end of the story. We should start at the beginning. Or maybe the middle.

We cut the carpet and pad out o the hobby room first, since we knew we'd be tearing down the walls and making a big mess in there.

All the way down to bare floor. You really can't imagine how much nicer these rooms are with the carpet taken out. It's weird, but they smell, look, and feel nicer with the OSB flooring than with the carpet in them. Once we get some beautiful hardwood up in there, we'll be sitting very pretty indeed.

Hobby room: De-floored.

My dad, sweeping up. These rooms haven't been this clean since the house was built, I'm thinking.

Coming through the wall here. The sledge and the crow bar were our weapons of choice, while the axes languished in the background.

This stuff goes pretty quickly once you can just swing away.

Almost all of the drywall out. The tile wall came out really easily, actually. Once I got a good handhold, I could just pull it off in big chunks.

The first of the framing pieces to be removed. This is where it gets really serious.

Time to take out the tub, now. All this foam was plugging up the hole around the drains, so it had to be removed. Then I cut the pipes, taped them shut, and the tub came right out. Thankfully, it hadn't been glued down like I've seen suggested in some books.

Working to get ourselves some more space. Once these big framing pieces come down, it's going to feel much more like the room we want it to be.

So close! You can see the water supply lines there where I'd capped them originally. In order to do the rest of the destruction/construction, we're going to have to cut them off much closer to the place where they enter the bathroom and cap them off there. Thankfully, these caps are reusable, which will be very helpful for future plumbing projects.

This is a bit weird, now. Just a giant hole of unfinished-ness in my otherwise finished house.

There we go. Now we have enough room to cut these off.

This is about as far as we got in here. We can't bring the ceiling down without raking the loose insulation away from this area in the attic, and we don't really need to do that yet. We'll get there soon enough, I'm sure.

For reference: The back side of the carpet in the master bedroom. It looks like an old pirate map. The stains in this carpet are even more impressive when you realize they have the upgraded, stain-proof carpet pad underneath. It has a layer of plastic on top so stains can't sink into the pad and then come back up again. All the stains on this carpet must have been spills that were just left without any attempts at cleanup. How many of these are urine? The world may never know.

I didn't realize just how bad these upstairs bedrooms smelled until we got the carpet out. There are still stains on the subfloor (Yes, through the carpet, through the stain-proof pad, somehow) and we'll be coating all of it with a healthy layer of Killz before we put down the hardwood. I'm simply amazed at the level of abuse this poor place suffered. I'm no Suzy Homemaker or anything, but just having giant puddles of fluid on every square inch of carpeted space in the house? That seems like something everyone can recognize as being bad.

Erick came over again and couldn't help but help, as is his custom. He showed us a really fast way to remove the tack strips. We'd been using our various tiny pry bars and such and it took a long time. he used the giant destructo-bar and it went so much more quickly.

This is my dad's truck, piled high with all our trash.

Yup. Gross. All of it goes to the dump.

Anyway, that's all we have for now. We put some chalk lines down on the subfloor to mark the new walls, and we'll finish up with the demolition and start the new framing this week. Exciting times! Thanks for reading.