Bathroom is now the "wreck" room

Today I started wrecking the bathroom next door. The hideous little space came apart readily enough, its construction consisting mainly of a series of quick-fixes, carried out over the course of many years. I wielded the wrecking bar with abandon, taking pleasure in seeing the shoddy work come apart so easily, not even resisting a little bit. There was no finesse in my approach: if a fixture needed removing from the wall, a solid whack from the strong iron bar sent it flying. The shower rod and filthy plastic curtain crumpled together in a mass, ready for the trash. There would be no more cleaning this shower stall; the cheap plastic walls that stood up from the tub tore and succumbed after a few blows from the clawed bar. I wondered at the layers of unskilled workmanship that the demolition revealed, the numerous repairs undertaken over the years, each one built upon another distressing piece of work, so that any succeeding addition—any subsequent repair—was doomed to be even worse than its predecessor. The whole thing was an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle—or possibly a combination of different puzzles. The workmanship was universally poor

Within an hour I had the little space mostly demolished. The sink was gone, the shower head stood alone, a piece of broken board supporting it, and the pipes from the basement adding a little additional support. The cheap vanity, made of pressed wood, was flattened and in pieces, and out by the road for tomorrow’s trash. Any fixtures worth saving were in a little pile out in the dining room. Scrap metal was in a box that I had started for that purpose. I’ll post an ad online for the sink, as it is still functional, and might be used for a workshop or some other purpose where appearance is not critical. It is free for the taking. I’ll do the same for the mirror and medicine cabinet, a cheap item I picked up when I bought the house. It is still in good shape, but I will not be reusing it. The mirror I just bought is much nicer and goes with the other things in the bathroom set.

I will cut off the plumbing leading to the bathroom, maybe tomorrow—possibly Friday. Most of it will have to be reworked; I plan to relocate the tub and shower to the wall at the end of the room, put the sink and vanity and toilet in the main area. They are currently crammed together down at the end of the tiny bathroom, making it difficult to maneuver down there. If I can pull this off, it will be a wonderful use of the space. It is time for the bathroom to get a new lease on life—there was nothing more to be done with the old space, the constant fixes, the cheap repairs and shoddy work. They must all be done away with, everything, together—once and for all. This gives me great pleasure.