As I mentioned in my last post, now that the insurance adjuster stopped in for his last assessment of the damage, things are finally getting rolling. Rolling is putting it lightly. Less than 24 hours since then, we have one of those demolition dumpsters out back, contractors were in yesterday looking over our upstairs bathroom to get ready to start working on it. While in there, Casey had asked if there is anyway they could include taking out the current tub/shower and putting in our cast iron clawfoot tub. I wasn’t expecting them to agree to it, but they did. Only one condition… the shower tiles have to be out…. By this morning…

Well, as usual with contractors, they got too busy with something else and didn’t show up at all today. Bad thing? Heck no. Last night, I spent my precious time with a wonder bar and a hammer, knocking out tile after tile.

First I started on the newer wall that enclosed the shower plumbing:

Next, I worked on the back wall (with Casey assisting in cleanup and my blue wonder bar just begging to do more destruction by the window):

Lastly, I did the left side:

No more tiles:

Once I pulled all the tiles off I decided I would attempt to extract the 2×4′s to use whenever I get to finishing the basement. So I start unscrewing them wherever I can. I get to a point where I almost able to get them out, but the tub is in the way. Give up on $15 worth of salvagable lumber? I. don’t. think. so. So what do I do? I rip out the tub of course and find something I half expected, half didn’t expect. The original douglas fir flooring, probably with the original finish.

I already knew that the flooring was cut up before the tile was put down in this room, but I couldn’t remember the extent. So now what? Take up the tile, right? Yessir, that is what I did.

To be honest, the extent of the damage is better than I was expecting. I was honestly expecting to see twice as much cut up. So now we have to make the decision on what we want to do for flooring. We were originally leaning towards ripping the entire floor out and attempting to find funds to get reclaimed douglas fir flooring. Now we are thinking of spending countless hours stripping the existing flooring of the extremely old, stubborn linoleum (any suggestions are welcome, I fought at it for 30 minutes and barely scratched the surface) off of the douglas fir and using a much small amount of reclaimed fir to patch the cut up areas.

So now we are going to have to see if the contractors can work around the existing floor.