Demo Time!

Also known as "Down comes the Drywall" - this bathroom demo needed to be done over a weekend. This was bad. and I made it worse. We don't know when the addition was built onto this house but it feels like it was done in the 60's or 70's. Shit is just weird in there. I knew there was more space behind the drywall so I needed to get into the corner for that closet space. I knew there was a weird kick out in the wall with the sink that I needed to flush up. I figured I needed to do this all in one weekend - create a massive hole going into the attic and fill it in to block out the heat.

There's the drain pipe that caused the kick out in that wall

Note the single light fixture and purline for the plumbing

Closet wall is open. What's missing but still in the wrong place here?

Our original plan was to open this wall up all the way to the back of the toilet wall and build that out flush. There's a white vent pipe in there, so I knew I wouldn't be able to go all the way back. I didn't expect to see these roof joists back there. But the other thing I didn't notice until it was too late - NO INSULATION! Is that why that bedroom is always hot? It's got attic heat with only a thin layer of drywall between comfortable and the attic.

I had to figure out how the existing drywall was supposed to be attached to the same board that the roof sheeting was against, and how to get some drywall to stick to almost no framing. this just got weird.

Plus, there's insulation on the floor to shelter the bedroom below. Why no wall insulation? why?

it's only weird if you make it weird

the pipe and offending roof truss'

I cut those truss

but still have to drywall around the white pipe

I shoveled back all of the insulation to clean up that subfloor and cut two of the roof truss' to match what was done for the backside of the closet. This is where I really started to screw up. I'm ready to start framing and hang some drywall. Remember this is open attic space in the middle of august in North Carolina. It's fucking hot. My only thought was to seal up the attic space.

Why? Why didn't I just build some standard wall framing and hang drywall on evenly spaced studs? Why didn't I try to get some square corners framed in there? Why didn't I add wall insulation to the existing framing? Well, because there wasn't any evenly spaced studs, for starters. Plus I just forgot since it wasn't in there to begin with. After I was about 90% done with the drywall I realized I should have added some insulation.

First I added furring strips. This did not create a straight wall.

Start hanging drywall against nothing. That's going to work, right?

this should work fine

It got a bit dusty in there.

man that looks like drywall! No major gaps in there at all.

What could go wrong?

that's not even the same thickness

I've hung a lot of drywall in my day, and I've never been very good at it. We were broke as shit this weekend, I could barely scrape together $40 for a single sheet of drywall and all the 2x4's I could get. The rest literally came from scraps already in my shed. So it's terrible. It's far worse than any other drywall I've ever tried. The old drywall is 1/2" thick. The new drywall is 1/2" thick. Why, then, do the seams leave a 3/8" gap in thickness? I don't understand. Why didn't I just frame out some new walls? Why didn't I add insulation? Why didn't I square up any of the corners? I did add 2 layers of 3/8" thick subfloor plywood to the new floor space in the closet. That was pretty satisfying.

But there are massive gaps in the drywall joints. None of the corners are square. Most of the drywall is barely attached to anything. I should have sistered 2x6's up against the existing studs on the sink wall to make everything flush. That wall bends like a batten now. The back wall of the closet has no framing behind it, but I didn't want to put studs in because that would shorten the depth of the closet and make the back drywall more than 48" tall, and I really needed to make 5' out of my one sheet of drywall fit that entire closet back. But how did the closet ceiling go up on the left side? That should not have left gaps like that. One hole was so big I had to cut it out and put in a patch. ugh.

Well, at least the attic is sealed up again. Next up I make shiplap for a curved wall, and some shelves.