Surprise, Surprise!!
I had noticed that the grout in the master shower was cracking a bit, so I decided to chisle it out and regrout. But, when I started to remove the old grout, the tiles started falling off the walls. Lo and behold, I found that we had a leak, and all the drywall had gotten soaked up to about 4 feet off the floor, and black mold had started growing. So, the only answer was to pull all the tile off the walls and rip down the bad drywall and do the whole job over again.
Needless to say, I think this was part of the reason that I have been having more than the usual allergy problems.
I called a neighbor of mine who does remodeling and home repairs, and asked him if he could stop by and give me an estimate on what it would cost to repair it. During his visit, my wife revealed our wish to just remodel the whole thing. He generously offered to give me a hand with it if I was willing to do most of the work.
We had originally wanted to remodel the bathroom anyway and pull the tub and make a huge walk-in shower with dual heads, so now seemed as good a time as any to do that.
We tried to pry the tub off the floor and found that the builder had set the tub on a big blob of cement, so we had to use an 8 foot 2×4 to pry it off. I spent 2 days with an air chisel getting the leftover cement off the floor.
More to follow…