Lake House Bathroom Demolition
Prior to RA Heating and Air Conditioning installing central heat and air in the lake house, I had to rip out a small downstairs bathroom in order to add space in the utility room to accommodate the new furnace and other appliances. Here is what the bathroom looked like before being demolished:
The first step was removing the toilet, which was fairly simple, although it had been grouted into place when the floor was tiled, so I had to do some hammering and chiseling to dislodge it. Once it had been removed, I moved on to the shower. This was significantly more complicated because one of the interior walls had a ton of plumbing (for the shower, as well as other faucets) and a lot of electrical, including light switches and a thermostat for the utility room baseboard heaters. Therefore, I had to proceed fairly carefully with a multitool and a reciprocating saw, removing small pieces of drywall to expose the inside of the wall, at which point I was able to use an angle grinder with a cutoff blade to remove the copper pipes and wiring. With the sensitive stuff out of the way, I was able to attack the remaining sheet rock and shower walls with a sledge hammer.
Once the walls had been taken out, I used a reciprocating saw to take out the (non load-bearing) beams from the corner of the shower, and then used a shop vac to deal with all of the debris. Here was the final result:
I am leaving the floor drains in place for now, since they are still useful in a basement utility room. I also (after an uproar on Facebook) made sure to keep the Wisconsin Badger themed red toilet seat.
