Tips for Demo Day

It’s week 2 of the One Room Challenge and that almost always means demo week! This is not our first bathroom demo and I am happy to report that we got it done in 1 day. Or more like 6 hours. Not too bad! It feels great to have it done and we are excited for the next steps. Today I’m going to share some tips for demo day and any tricks that we have learned during the demo process.

Safety comes first

The main reason we are renovating this bathroom is because of a black mold problem. The original tiles are plastic that were glued straight to the wall. No moisture protection. Very little grout/adhesive between tiles. It is quite impressive that they lasted as long as they did, however, we started noticing black mold after using the shower exclusively during the renovation of our en suite bathroom. In addition to the mold, the tiles began popping off the wall, leading to more moisture damage. Ventilators were our number one priority during demo and I highly recommend them for anyone doing major construction work. It’s not worth the risk to skip it. We used these ones from Ace Hardware.

Designate a garbage can for toting material

When we renovated the en suite bathroom, we tore everything out first, and then cleaned it up. That involved dragging super heavy garbage bags from the bathroom to the garage. This time around, Colin ripped everything out while I packed up the garbage can and brought it out to the garage to fill bags. The process was so much quicker this way! I highly recommend each person having a job versus trying to work on the same thing at once. I also recommend not dragging garbage bags across your house where they can rip and spill and scratch the floor. Treat yourself, get a garbage can with wheels.

Protect your stuff

Don’t underestimate what the mess you’ll make. There will be dust, dirt, and debris everywhere. Spend 30 minutes prepping your space for demo. Cover all soft surfaces, line your floors with some sort of protective wrap and/or cardboard, close doors to stop the spread of dust, and maybe wall off your work area with plastic wrap if possible. At the very least, close doors. The difference between the rooms that I closed and the rooms that were open to demo was insane. So. Much. Dust. Close your doors, folks.

Mentally prepare to clean your house

The last thing you’ll want to do after you spend all day demoing your space is to clean. But it’s a necessary step. Remember that dust I just talked about? It’s going to be everywhere. And you don’t want to have that floating in your air when you take the masks off. We have an air filter that was reading 400 in the middle of demo. By the time I finished cleaning the house, it was down to 50. It came back to 5 a few hours after that. Worth it! And you might have to clean the day after too, when the next layer of dust settles. Mentally prepping yourself for an extra hour of work makes it slightly less annoying when the time comes!

Schedule work prior to demo day

You just spent all that time gutting your space. Don’t waste weeks waiting on tradespeople to come do work. Schedule your work prior to tearing out your space, then demo based on availability. I don’t know about you, but I was taking advantage of every single day we had access to 2 bathrooms on the main floor! Tradespeople are insanely busy right now, so get them booked early and work around their schedules.

Hope someone found these tips for demo day helpful! Feel free to reach out with any specific questions. We were able to do 90% of the work with a crowbar and hammer (and muscle). So don’t get intimidated if you don’t have every single tool. We have plumbers in this week to replace all the old galvanized pipes, then our neighbor is helping Colin move electric for the pocket door. After that it’s drywall time! Hope you’ll come by next week to see the progress, and be sure to follow all the One Room Challenge participants. As always, I will be posting updates to Instagram and maybe even TikTok?! See you next week!