The bathroom is slowly coming along. It’s starting to look less like a pile of rubble, and more like something on its way to a delightful, spa-like environment. The former plastic shower insert that we removed a couple weeks ago had some framing and additional walls to bring down the ceiling to the height of the shower insert. I don’t know why anyone would ever design it that way. It essentially cut off all the light to the shower and made the bathroom seem much smaller and more closed in. My guess is that the plastic shower insert was a relatively quick & easy solution to create a functional shower. And when you only have one shower in your house, you can’t afford much downtime.

Our drywall guy sounded like he could take down the additional framing, but as it turns out, he had a very brief window of time to work on our bathroom, and needed us to demo that section before he could start work. Ugh. Well, not a huge deal, especially since we are resourceful and have the added benefit of having some beefy friends.

The upper framing was put together with a shit ton of nails. It looks like the person who put it together was a DIYer (no shame in that!), but they used an overabundance of long nails to really secure the crap out of the shower framing. I understand why they didn’t use screws. They are more expensive and take longer. And they weren’t building it with demolition in mind. You can see the treacherous pokey nails (and smiling menfolk) below:

Regardless, Laura papped away at the section for awhile and dismantled a good deal of it using tools & physics. Then, our brawny friends came over and added some brute strength to the process. After over 2 hours of hammering, pulling,  cursing, & bleeding, the top section was out.

The drywall guy was able to seal up the ripped up area by the vanity, seal up the peephole to the hallway, and recreate a ceiling above the shower. Looking better already!