Bathroom Remodel - Day 2 - More Fireplace Demo

Finally got the fireplace out! It was a lot more work than expected. I think the house was built around it, because it was not really designed to just slide in and out. We had to tear out some walls and drain some batteries for the reciprocating saw (as well as kill some metal blades). Even the sledgehammer came out. In the end it was out. That took most of the morning!

We demoed the wall in the bathroom carefully, saving the 2x4s. I used them to reframe the hole in the wall that the fireplace left.

This left us with a chance to see what space we could reclaim for the bathrooms for the first time. We are going to be able to reclaim about 80-85% of the space, which is super awesome.

In the picture below I've drawn where the new framing will go. We have to box around the exhaust for the water heater and heater, but that's not too bad. The new space we are gaining will become storage/shelving. We aren't entirely certain yet, but in the meantime it'll be framed out and prepped.

The fireplace chimney is proving to be a simple, but labor intensive fix. Basically we need to remove all the piping up to where it's just in the attic. Then cap it off. When we go to reroof the house in the future, we'll remove the faux chimney box and fireplace cap at that point. Hopefully that'll not have to happen for a few more years yet.

That's the project for tomorrow. After that is done I'll drywall up the hole in the den. Then it should be all bathroom from there!