Renovation is not a dinner party

Chairman Mao famously said: Revolution is not a dinner party. Well last night during a candle-lit dinner party on upper Montrose, I proposed that we should make t-shirts of Chairman Mao holding a reciprocating saw with the tagline: Renovation is not a dinner party. Of course, we thought this was brilliant, but how many t-shirt wearing, renovating sinophiles are there, other than me, of course?

Well, cottage industry aside, it was time to get the floor out today. I was supposed to be off at the end of the week, but asked my kind boss this morning if I could switch with today so that I could help Dan (somebody has to remove the wiring), and my kind boss said yes! So I was free to make dozens of trips up and down the stairs with heavy loads of rubble to the almost full Rhino Bag decorating our front lawn.

After a few pilot drills, we realized that the two layers of subfloor were both 5/8" thick. Many of the screws would not come out or were hidden by tile grout. We had torn out our kitchen floor with relative ease just two years ago, so as always, I underestimated how difficult this would be. I guess that if I thought it would be hard, I wouldn't take it on. It's like some women with childbirth: they know it is going to be difficult, but they do it anyway. I guess the new bathroom is like my baby. I just hope that it doesn't take 9 months!

After several passes with the circular saw, and many hours later, we had an opening 16" across and about 24" long. It allowed us to see the ceiling below and the bulkhead in the kitchen, where all the plumbing passes. After about 30 minutes of gawking at the damage and admiring how strong and sturdy the existing floor is, we thought that we should leave it at that and let the plumber tell us if he needed more floor removed. It was time to walk up the street for a shower and to vote at the advance polls. I may be a sinophile, but I also enjoy the benefits of democracy, so it was my honour to exercise my civic duty.

I think that Chairman Mao would have been proud of my three days of hard labour. It has certainly reformed my thoughts about civil society, but I had the luxury of a hot shower at the end of the day, after a short march north, so it wasn't really that much of a revolution -- just the start of a long renovation.

Bathroom renovation begins

Dan starts a new job after Thanksgiving and had a miraculous two weeks off. I thought that we should celebrate with either a trip to New York, or by renovating our over-sized and hideous bathroom. For better or worse, we have chosen the more expensive but more permanent option: the bathroom. New York will always be there, right?

A few years ago we made a temporary fix by removing the wallpaper and giving it a neutral coat of white paint, but we just couldn't get beyond that pink tub and toilet, the waste of space and the fact that the shower dribbled like a water pick. The whole room was disappointing. This is our time for revenge.

Our main bathroom is possibly the largest room in our tiny house. It is the same size as our kitchen and main floor 2 piece bathroom. It was originally a tiny bedroom and a tiny bathroom. Alas, we are going to undo that modification and return it to it's original configuration, but hopefully it will be much nicer.

We started last week by removing the closet and cupboards. Dan began chipping away at the ceramic floor tiles on Wednesday and Thursday, and finally finished this hideous task by Saturday. We bought a Rhino Bag from Home Hardware and put it on our front yard and started to fill it with debris. Any usable pieces were re-gifted to strangers on Craigslist. (Will somebody really want that giant pink bathtub?) Things were looking pretty bare on Saturday night when we used the pink shower for the final time. A little bit more water pressure would have helped my aching muscles, but why would it change now? People and bathrooms do not change.

With this giant task complete, all we had to do on Sunday was remove the fixtures and then tear up the subfloor. We got an early start, but like most things, I underestimated how time consuming these tasks would be. I spent about 30 minutes laying under the toilet as rusty water dripped on my head, trying to loosen the tank bolt. Finally we decided to leave the damn tank on, and Dan carried the whole thing out and placed it proudly on our front porch. A few hours later, we brought the sink/vanity outside as well. I checked my email and somebody had responded to my craigslist posting and wanted all three pieces. Hooray. We had to have the tub out by 6 p.m. because that was when they were coming. This led to the video at the top of the posting, where Dan smashed the hell out of the tiles while I cowered by the windows, and pieces of shattered tile flew through the air. (We both had our safety glasses on.) I got into the action as well. I took my turn with the hammer, and pulled down quite a few pieces of cement board covered in tiles, but we just didn't get any photos of this.

A pink fiberglass bathtub that measures 70.5"x35" is not that heavy, but it is very awkward. We called our good friend Matthew in a panic to see if he could help get it down the stairs, but luckily for him, he was on Highway 407 at the time, and with the new owners coming soon, we had to do it ourselves. Surprisingly, it only took us a few minutes to negotiate it down the steep stairs and over the hand railing, to the front porch, where we leaned it against my bike.

Now it was time to cap the copper pipes so that we could turn the water back on. There are now showers in our house now, but we do enjoy the simple pleasures like washing our hands, or a cool glass of water. Renovators cannot live on beer alone, can they? I pulled out my "plumbing shoe box" of tools and accessories from the course that I took back in 2005 at Central Tech. With an aluminum cookie sheet as a shield, I fired up the torch and managed two good solders on my first try. I was as pleased as Dan when he finished the floor tiles.

Alas, we had run out of time for the day and the floor would have to be done by Dan the next day. So off we went to dinner & showers on Upper Montrose, a civilized way to end a busy renovating weekend. It's not quite New York, but still very nice.

Tearing Up The Floor

What would you do the day after your big work Christmas party, and the day before you have contractors coming in? Why tear up the floor, of course!! (This post does not refer to dancing.)

In order to prepare for our Greensaver retrofit, we had to "lift" the floor in the kitchen. The finished floor is a floating uniclick tile, which we could easily remove & later replace, but then we had to cut out the plywood subfloor. I pulled out the giant Black & Decker How To book that I borrowed from the library and got some tips on how to proceed. We unplugged the stove and moved it to the back room. We lifted the tiles, carefully numbering them all on the back, and indicating their orientation. We stored them in the upstairs bathroom, one of the only spaces that Green$aver would not have to work in. We rolled up the thin foam underlay and set it aside. Then we pulled out the circular saw that Dan gave me for my birthday. (I love practical gifts!!) We set the saw blade to the depth of the subflooring levels (5/8" plywood + 1/4" poplar underlay + 1/8" old linoleum). Crowbar, hammer and lots of elbow grease, and we pulled out the first piece. We realized that the linoleum was glued to the poplar, which was staped to the plywood, which was screwed and NAILED into the joists. We decided to take the linoleum/poplar layer off first, and then just remove the parts of the plywood where they would need access in order to insullate the crawl space below.

We also removed the base cabinets, except for the two end ones, because they have plumbing running through them. Demolition can be fun. You get to bang and tear stuff out. But it was a hard day of heavy labour, and I know that it is going to be followed by many weeks of more complicated work just to bring it back to where we were. I am having major regrets. We could have gone to Paris for two weeks, but instead we are renovating our kitchen. Will it be worth it? One of my colleagues says that a kitchen that bugs you is like a bad relationship - it will keep bugging you until you deal with it. So, this is me - dealing with it. Hopefully writing will set me free.