Master Bath Phase 1: Demolition

Have you ever sat down to write a blog post and gotten discouraged because of how MUCH you had to write?  That’s sorta how I felt about putting to words all that we’ve done in our master bath over the past few days.  So, instead of bogging you down with words, I’m going to let these (grainy, taken at night with no natural light – sorry!) photos do the talking!

Oh, who am I kidding, I’ll still have to narrate here and there.

The master plan for our master bath includes a board and batten wall treatment, new countertop and sink, and SURPRISE! a new mirror.  We’ll get to the hows and whys on that later, but first let’s remember how the bathroom looked last Friday.

The green tape is there so I could get a feel for how tall our board and batten would be, but before we could start batten-ing (LOVE making up words!) we had to do some patching.

And some caulking.  I’d run out of white, but since the top half of our walls will be gray, I went with some leftover gray caulk for around the tub.

This is my trick not to make a mess with the caulk:  Use painters tape.

And remove it before the caulk dries.

Let’s get a good idea for what the vanity area looked like before we started to demo…  Take note of the 80s lighting, builder mirror (with those AWFUL clear flower screws in the corners), and yellowed countertop.

YES – those are stickers on the inside of our bathroom door.  They have been there since we moved in 3 years ago, and honestly I’d forgotten they were even there until I saw this photo!

I knew we’d be replacing the countertop, so I got my utility knife and got to work removing the backsplash.

Apparently my utility knife didn’t quite do the trick.  As I started prying the backsplash off, I heard lots of RIPPPPPPING.

Ugh.  What a mess.

Time to get out the spackel!

Stephen and I had been staring at the mirror for about 10 minutes, trying to figure out how we’d frame it to hide those hideous flower screws, when he decided “just to see” if it was held on by glue.  30 seconds later the mirror was off the wall (thankfully not glued on).

Just like that, it was time to add New Mirror to our shopping list!

I knew there’d be a mess behind that light fixture, and since we were replacing it, it was time to take it down so I could patch everything at once.

Instead of the mess we’d expected, we got a glimpse into our bathroom’s blue past!

The next step was to remove the second piece of backsplash.  This is where things get gross.

Apparently the seal between the mirror and backsplash had deteriorated over time, and we were left with BLACK mold along the seam where the bottom of the mirror had been.

Boy, am I glad we got rid of that mirror – we would never have known this was back there otherwise!  Can I get an EWWWWW?

I bleached and removed the backsplash.  Then I scraped the leftover adhesive off the wall and bleached that sucker again!

Here’s what we ended up with after bleaching, spackeling, and sanding.

To continue prepping for our board and batten, I got out the glossy white paint.  Before I could paint, I removed our old switch plates which will be replaced with white ones when we’re done.

Here’s a tip to keep track of the screws when you’re removing switch plates: Use painter’s tape to tape the screws into each hole.  This is how ours will look when they’re donated to our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore!

Finally we were getting somewhere.  By the end of our demolition and prepping process, the walls had been patched and sanded, the light and mirror were down, and the first coat of paint went up in preparation for our board and batten wall treatment.

Things have to get worse before they get better, right?

Stay tuned tomorrow for the fun part – construction!  (And don’t worry, much prettier pictures are on the way!!)