Day Two -- Sink is out!

As you'll recall, progress was blocked yesterday by a broken shutoff valve (not only did it not shut off the water -- it didn't even slow it down!). This little bastard, to be specific:

Happily, installing a new shutoff valve is not at all difficult (one charming DIY YouTube channel rates different home repairs from 1-7 F-bombs, depending on how many times you're likely to yell "f**k!" in anger during the repair, which is exactly the right way to rate home repair. IKEA should do the same thing for assembly instructions). This was a genuine zero F-bomb repair. Check out the results below, imagining that one day soon it'll be that shiny in a freshly tiled new wall, not the grotty crap it's in now.

And here it is, the, uh, beautiful? result. While the shutoff valve was trivial, the sink removal was hell -- it was held to the wall by 5 screws, all in an impossible to reach location, and which had to be laboriously pulled out about 1/32 of a turn at a time. They were four inches long, and most of them could not be unscrewed by hand for any portion of those four inches. Just silly. It literally took an hour. In any case, all the hardware is out (sorry, just noted that the HVAC register is still there. I'll get it this afternoon). 

And while I was removing stuff, I also took out the old medicine cabinet, leaving a gaping hole in the wall. When IKEA stuff gets here on Monday, I'll start planning where things will go in the new bathroom, and then I can decide what exactly to do with this open space. The whole wall has to come down anyway. Hey, while you're at it, check out that ancient knob and tube wiring (they look like pulley strings)! That insulation is made out of cloth (white for positive, black for negative, I assume), believe it or not. Vintage 1930!

Notice that a couple of tiles are off. I pulled them off on purpose, just to see how difficult it would be and what was behind them (the answer is familiar from our kitchen -- a weird, plaid-like pattern, painted on the plaster; maybe I'll get a pic of it tomorrow). But the real discovery? The tiles are not tile. They are f**king plastic. Our neighbors warned us that every single home repair done here by the previous owners was done in the most insanely cheap way imaginable (often with parts from the junk yard), but wow. That really takes the cake. 

One last item -- check out the horrendous things done to the door hardware over the years. With a chisel, a flat-head screwdriver and an X-acto knife, however, I cleaned out the holes for the locks, and the entire piece will get Jasco-ed later today (with me wearing a respirator and special chemical gloves, because that stuff is nasty). 

Tomorrow is an exciting day: If all goes well, I will sledgehammer down the plaster (gently--there are pipes, HVAC and electrical lines in the wall). But I will certainly make holes in the wall. Eye protection, face mask and shows required. My non-sledgehammering activity will be taking the mortise lock to some local locksmiths and seeing if they can provide a key. That would be awesome. OK. I'll do more work in the afternoon, but probably no more updates today -- I have to do some academic work for a half an hour or so.