DEMO!

The crew showed up 20 minutes early this morning for their first day on the project and got right to work tearing everything up. Our contractor Chris was here and went through the whole job with the crew and me and he had everything straight so that was good. The city took issue with our doorway openings, insisting they have to be at least 30" wide, which they will be, but just barely. Which in turn impacts our new laundry closet they'll be framing out in the office room. In our plans, we had the stackables facing the back large window, giving a wider and less deep closet. With the space needed for the venting and lines though, it would push the appliances right up against the door, and because we can't narrow any doorways, the framing will just be too tight. So we're rotating it a bit, and the stackables and door to the closet will now face the Friendly Yeti. I'm fine with that revision. It won't leave us room for shelves in the laundry closet, but we are keeping the large cleaning supply cabinets across from the old laundry area (soon to be new half-bath) so we'll just keep all the laundry supplies in there too. It'll work out.

I know you all want to see the mess they've made so far... This is the old laundry room, soon to be half-bath:

Ripping out the old tile was SO LOUD! I'm working in the living room so I can eavesdrop on the workers to hear what they're saying about the state of things, and I overheard them say the tile was the worst part. Once that was out it'd be a cakewalk. We have different definitions of cakewalks not surprisingly.

Demolishing the window tile ledge to prepare for moving the window up half a foot and making it flush with the wall:

 

There was a lot of grunting going on when they were removing the old cast iron and enamel sink. That sucker was concreted in.

Whole lot of plaster repair that will be going down in here...

The boys are holding up pretty well. Elsa's bedroom door to the office is closed and they've taped up a plastic barrier to the kitchen so I'm letting the pageant cats stroll around on their own accord, checking things out. It's not dusty or anything yet in the house, but they have all their goodies set up in our back bedroom if they want to get away from it all. I found them in the blanket storage drawer under our bed in the middle of the tile demo:



Smart kitties. The crew is carbing up with lunch right now, and will then tackle cabinet demo and pulling up the flooring! More progress pics later...