Bathroom Renovation | Demo Down to The Studs (Full Bathroom Gut)

This bathroom is the single biggest DIY project we’ve taken on to date! This demo project has been amazing, dirty, and trying all at the same time. But we’ve learned so much, saved A TON, and developed some new skills along the way!

Watch our Video: How to Demo a Bathroom

Here’s a look at the bathroom before. This bathroom was a previous homeowner special. I guess it was nice in the 80’s when our house was built?

One thing that I actually did like about this bathroom was that there was a separate switch for a light in the shower. I made sure we kept that feature in our new design.

See that little cubby that the toilet is set back in? Kinda cute right? Not. The builders either cut a corner and tried to save on an extra 4 inches of plumbing to make it flush with the rest of the wall, or they thought the toilet would sit too far out into the room and this was their solution to get some space back.

Here’s the tool list we used for demo:

• Protective Eye Wear
• Crowbar
• Work Gloves
• Sawzall (this comes as a larger combo kit with multiple tools!)
• Sledgehammer
• Hammer Drill and Thinset Removal Bit

Demo is every bit a fun as it looks on HGTV. But unlike television, it took us 16 hours to demo this one room across multiple weekends, and not a 45 second highlight reel. If you’re having your bathroom professionally redone, I don’t know if it will take this long to demo. It might be less time. but we also had floor to ceiling tiles on these walls, which took the majority of our time to rip out.

If you’re starting your own bathroom demo, figure out how you’re going to dispose of all your debris before you start. We’re lucky enough to live in a township that will take anything as long and it’s in a black trash bag and weighs less than 50 lbs per bag. It also helps to throw a $20 into the mix for your sanitation worker!

We started demo by removing all the high shatter items first to get them out of the way, which included the vanity mirror and the shower doors. We left the lightbulbs on the light fixture for as long as we could, but we did accidentally break a few of them while we were ripping down the tile and drywall.

I can’t stress enough the importance of wearing eye goggles while you’re demoing. There’s stuff flying all over the place and even if you think you’re super careful or going slow, sometimes stuff just happens. We got a couple of debris flecks in our eyes more than once on this project. Especially with the wall tile.

We alternated using the sledge hammer and the crowbar to pull down the drywall. Some pieces came off in huge 4 x4 chunks and other pieces feel like they were the size of a dollar.

This is where we ended demo on our first day. We were able to remove all the vanity and medicine cabinet, drywall and wall tiles, and tub surround. We also broke it down into manageable trash bags for the sanitation workers like I mentioned before.

We continued demo the next day with removing the tile floor.

I think the hammer drill was my favorite part of demo and it took the least amount of time. All I needed to do was put that bit under the tile and hold the trigger, and it popped all the tiles right off the floor.

If you can’t tell, I think this was really the most satisfying part of demo. Most of the tiles came up in one piece. Some broke in half, but they were all incredibly simple to remove.

There’s a view of behind the wall of the nook behind the toilet.

If you’d like to see more of our renovation projects, read our Renovation Blog Posts!