I see it.
The light at the end of DIY tunnel.
We are finally on the last room of our house that needs renovated, the master bath. In reality, this bathroom wasn't all that bad. Okay except for more dreaded burgundy bull nose tile, some random burgundy carpet that still resided behind the toilet and on the front of the corner mount tub - our lovely carpet layer measured a little short and after the whole carpet drama when we moved in... we just never made too big of a deal about it. After all, we got the whole house carpeted for free. But the day has come, the bathroom needs a little life restored in its veins.
With my Handy Man feeling under the weather this weekend, I was just the DIY woman for the job.
Of course, I was not so confident when Handy Man first suggested I demo the bathroom on my own while he watched the kids - translation: sit on the couch and watch golf all weekend.
Alas, I put on my big girl construction panties on, grabbed a hammer and some other tools and headed off to demolish our bathroom. It's a good thing I married a handy man... not matter how bad I mess something up, he can fix it. Right?
Handy Man helped me remove the carpet and then I was on my own.
This is going to be quite the demo. I need to pull up all the carpet tack strips, tear out the linoleum, tear off the laminate surface around the tub, remove all the carpet staples, remove the dreaded linoleum staples, and sweep her clean.
First thing is first, move my iPhone doc to the bathroom and plug her in.
Find a great playlist to listen to.
Hmmm maybe I should wear a different shirt?
Change my shirt.
Off to the kitchen for something to drink.
Grab the boom and dustpan while I am there. I'll need it anyways. Just killing two birds with one stone.
Kiss the kids.
"Use" the other bathroom.
Head back to the master bathroom and filter though a couple songs.
About this time Handy Man comes in to assess my progress only to see that I have done nothing except change clothes and preoccupy myself with all things other than the DIY task at hand.
The past construction manager in him comes out in full force. Before I know it he's micro-managing me and I'm thinking about quitting or taking my grievances to the union.
I started with the laminate around the tub.
I still don't understand why they put laminate around the tub.
I then started pulling out the carpet tack strips and carpet staples out of the sub-floor. Tedious, but I was making some progress.
Definitely not digging the blue walls any more. Good thing we will repainting.
Least amount of fun - trying to pull staples from behind the toilet.
Not that you wanted to see a picture of our toilet.
On to the linoleum flooring.
The majority came out in one big piece.
So I did a little dance.
I was dreading what I would do if I found more of that stupid glue in the bathroom.
That really creepy still-gooey-after-ten-years glue we found in the kitchen. That wasn't even linoleum glue.That left huge yucky marks. That we had to paint over after scraping forever to remove it.
Okay there was something a little sticky near the vent.
But it was totally manageable.
That only left one thorn in my side.
The dreaded linoleum staples.
These babies are BIG!
They are about an inch long and each staple prong is driven about 3/4 an inch into the sub-floor. There is no easy way to remove these things. They take some big boy tools. First you have to get underneath them with a pry-bar. You have to hammer the end in and then leverage the staple up enough to where you can flip the pry-bar around and use the other, more curved end, to finally pry the things out.
I hate removing these huge staples.
Handy Man can remove them in no time flat. I can usually get one staple removed in the time it take him to remove three.
Then again, he has been a Handy Man all of his life.
This is why I married him - so he could do these kinds of things for me.
Yet there I was, slaving over my pry-bar, hammer, pliers and utility knife. DIY'ing my weekend away. Listening to some tunes. Building my resume.
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