Demo Progress & Bathroom Floorplan

We're still plugging away at demo work (every day is demo day at this house), but the good news is the framing for our bathroom upstairs has begun! The bad news is, our entire house, except for our bedroom, is a literal construction site right now, and I'm kind of getting antsy for some normalcy. I'll explain later, but first, demo progress pictures.

We started by taking down the plaster wall and attic stairway upstairs by our main stairway landing. Once this project is done, this wall will have two new doorways that will lead into our bathroom and laundry room.

How the stairway landing looked when we moved in.

Now you can see into the guest room! This is the room where we're installing the laundry and bathroom. 

Then, we had to start demo from the other side. The guest room had a build-in bookcase and a closet that we had to take away. One thing working in our favor was that the closet's existing size was pretty much the exact size we needed for our laundry room. So, we didn't really have to do much there, expect strip it down to the studs. On the other side, we had to rip out the bookcase, and take down an interior wall that was put up in the 70s (we found writing on the wall from the installation!) that allowed them to install the built-in.

The guest room wall when we moved in.

One thing we learned during this process is that the bookcase pictured above was originally a door way, exactly where we plan on putting the door to the bathroom. Too bad we need it pushed back by about a foot. 

Bathroom framing has begun!

In order to run the bathroom plumbing up here, we had to also start to demo out the plaster walls in our living room. I was, like, really excited to do this because when we moved in, there was paneling over the plaster, and the paneling wasn't done well at all. The seams weren't lined up properly, there was a lot of bubbling and pulling away from the wall, and overall, it just didn't look good. I had actually painted this room in November because I assumed with everything else we had going on, this wasn't a project we'd get to in the next few years. So, it was kind of a waste of a weekend or two this past fall to paint it. But, we're getting drywall in here, so I can't really complain because this will allow us to pretty much finish the room exactly how we want it, including installing a hardwired light in the ceiling). To demo out the plaster walls, we had to quarantine the entire space and take out all the furniture we could. Basically, I lost my ridiculously serene, cozy sanctuary downstairs. All our furniture is currently squished into our front sitting room, and watching TV or a movie is less than ideal right now. So much so that we decided once the plumbing and electrical for the bathroom upstairs is done, we're going to focus in on getting the drywall up, taped, sanded and painted as fast as possible to move back into the living room. Then, we'll resume our bathroom installation. We're really missing our living room retreat right now.

Here's our living room progress and current status:

Living Room when we moved in.

Painted for only a few months, and cleared out to begin demo work!

Paneling down.

Plaster down on the wall where our plumbing will go through.

So, now the fun part - planning the reason we're doing this all! We recently finalized the plans for our new guest room/bathroom/laundry room. Here's what we're looking at:

So that's where we're at. Basically, a state of severe disarray. It's the stage I like to call "What the heck did we get ourselves into is there really a light at the end of this insane tunnel I'm so tired of plaster dust everywhere" stage. I know it'll be worth it in the end. But this is probably my least favorite stage. I am, however, incredibly grateful to be in it nonetheless.