Vacation? What is that?

Sorry, I didn't publish a blog post last week because I was busy. The lovely Mrs and I decided one day that we wanted to get rid of the PINK tile in our bath, leftover from the 60's. (No, we didnt put it in, it's original from when the house was first built.)

We started in one day pulling the little plastic tiles off the wall and discovered (cue music) BLACK MOLD! (cue voiceover: Scream) Now anyone with a little knowledge of this stuff knows that this is not good. Black Mold is known to cause ill effects in people without allergies. Exposure can lead to a sort of poisoning that has numerous symptoms and effects which I will not go into here, but suffice to say we had to get rid of it and in a hurry.

Which references nicely the above picture. That's a 20 Yard Dumpster pulled up in our driveway. My job gave me a week vacation (Vacation? Really?) and we had the big dumpster delivered on Monday. I created a nice ramp to allow us to toss wall parts out the window and for the next few days we attacked the room with gusto. (No, Gusto is not a new bleach, try to keep up, ok?)

It was really a comedy of errors that week, but oddly only a few of them were mine. Most came from past construction or construction standards. Example: We pulled off the tile behind the tub only to find 2 layers: CERAMIC tile over Wallboard over PLASTIC TILE over more WALLBOARD! Strange? According to experts, this is how things were done back in the day. Sheesh.

We pulled out the tub and discovered the floor had all but rotted away. So of course we now had to replace the floor! Oh but before we can do that, we had to chop out the old lead drain and replace with a nice PVC drain. Let's see, we also had to remove aluminum wiring (not to code) pull out the old fan/heater combo (no vent, had to put in a vent!) and basically gut the entire room to the studs.

The only thing that saved me from my own ineptitude is that I have a neighbor (No not Neighbor Bubba) who is a professional at this. He has also been out of work for a few weeks due to the economy and graciously offered to help (after 15 minutes of my begging on my knees) with the drain and floor (and he has some really neat tools!) What he can do with a Saws All is pure poetry. (Side note: My sister says that she knows someone who calls this nifty tool a Sawz Awe. Go figure.)

I ran out of vacation (vacation? really?) before I ran out of things to do. I am now working on getting the wallboard (yes, the green stuff, mold and moisture resistant) installed along with new fixtures but I have to work on the weekends. Such is my life. But if you're interested, you can see the transformation by clicking here!

Stay tuned for more fun from the south.