DIY Bathroom Demo to Make it Larger

This DIY bathroom demo on our small fixer upper would be the start to make it larger by opening up the walls.

We will take out the closet to the right of the bathroom to open up the space in there!

Proverbs 14:23

In all labor there is profit,
But idle chatter leads only to poverty.

You can also watch a video about this here.

BATHROOM DEMO TO MAKE IT LARGER

“So, there’s hard wood behind here,” says Nate. “Makes me wonder if that was original. Interesting!”

Here comes the exciting part of this demo – expanding the bathroom! Our small fixer upper had the TINIEST bathroom ever! Well, at least that’s what it felt like.

I know it might sound silly, but when we first walked through the house and I saw that you could only access the ONE small tiny bathroom from the main bedroom, I was like no, not cool, I can’t be doing that!

RENOVATION REFLECTIONS

At the time, I had no clue about renovations and how you could actually make changes just by simply opening up the walls.

I mean I’ve seen extreme makeover renovations on HGTV and such, but never did I think that we would actually be doing these same type of renovations on our own.

Sure, I knew that we bought a SMALL fixer upper, but honestly thought we would just tackle a few quick and easy renovations that were mostly cosmetic. However, what I quickly learned is that once you start pulling stuff up, you kinda have to just go with it because if you want it done right and you don’t want to just put a bandaid on everything that your going to have to redo later anyways, you might as well just take care of it right now.

Alright, so sit back, relax, grab a coffee or tea, and enjoy this blissful bathroom demo where we expand this tiny sucker! We hope that you find inspiration here for your own DIY projects and maybe even your own fixer upper renovations. Hopefully, it’s a small fixer upper like ours {wink wink}!

DIY BATHROOM DEMO – EXPANDING IT

Nate begins to tackle the bright blue wall behind where he removed the toilet and sink. Slam, slam, the sledge hammer goes to work on yet another demo in this tiny fixer upper! A hole starts to appear in the drywall now. He uses his hands to pull out chunks of it to see what’s behind the wall. A huge black pipe is revealed and he says it must be the drain pipe. He continues on with the renovations, working around that large pipe. 

Behind the drywall, Nate discovered hardwood and it made him wonder if it was original. He certainly thought that was interesting. 

As he continued to demo the bathroom wall, he discovered vapor barrier behind the drywall. Before buying this fixer upper, I knew very little about housing construction materials. I’ve been learning more of the lingo throughout our DIY renovations. Vapor barrier is essentially protection against moisture. That’s my very simple way of explaining it as a newbie to this world of home improvement terms.

Behind the vapor barrier was what appeared to be original hardwood from possibly when the house was built in 1934. At first we thought the addition built on the house was beyond that hardwood since it appeared to be original to the initial build. But, since it’s bare wood and not painted, maybe that’s not the best assessment of that. It’s a bit odd and we’re not really sure why there is a layer of hardwood in between the drywall of the bathroom and closet next to it.

CLOSET DEMO – EXPANDING INTO THE CLOSET

Now he’s going to make his way to the other side of the wall, which is where the closet is located, and continue to demo in there. It’s a very TINY closet by the way, but will now become a part of the TINY bathroom, making it not so tiny anymore.

Nate was going to attempt to demo the closet walls next. He knocked down the drywall in the closet connected to the bathroom, which also revealed the same hardwood he discovered earlier. It must be the same hardwood on the other side of the wall.

Now he’s going to tackle the back wall of the closet, which is behind where the water heater is located. I guess that would be the water heater closet. Another tiny little space. 

He already removed some of the drywall in that water heater closet.

The boards to the left of the water heater came up very easily. Nate didn’t have to use anything but his hands to remove them. They just came right off! “Don’t know how that happened,” he wondered. “But, some of the drywall in this area would just peel right off. There were also a few boards that were attached pretty good.”

It was crazy how some of it was not very secure and could easily be removed with your hand. Lots of unsound structures around here. Guess we shouldn’t be too surprised, after all, it is a fixer upper!

He continues the demo on the back wall of the closet from inside the small water heater closet. More drywall boards come down. Feels like we are just tearing up everything in this little house. I mean we literally end up doing that. No pure cosmetic renovations around here. We’re going all in on the action!

“That my friend is the closet,” says Nate. “That will be our bathroom. Going to be really cool!”

Thanks for joining us on this journey! We hope that you will find inspiration watching us learn as we go while we’re attempting to renovate and rebuild this old small historic home mostly on our own.

check out our videos!

If you want to see our bathroom demo and a video we made about our DIY bathroom flooring removal, click on the links below.

SMALL FIXER UPPER | DIY RENOVATIONS + BATHROOM DEMO

SMALL FIXER UPPER | DIY BATHROOM FLOORING REMOVAL