Doing The Bathroom Demolition Yourself

If you're planning on saving money for your bathroom remodeling budget, you can always do the bathroom demolition yourself. Tearing stuff apart is something that most of us are pretty good at. Give someone a hammer and a crowbar and pretty soon their demolition experts.

Do you have the physical strength required to remove heavy items like the bathtub or toilet? If you're not strong enough to remove these items and you're not going to reuse them, they can always be broken up into smaller pieces and hauled away easily. If you are planning on reusing any of the heavy bathroom fixtures, you can always ask someone for help, but be careful when selecting this person. Whether or not these people are physically fit, lifting these items incorrectly could result in back injury. Back injuries could lead to lawsuits, something to consider very carefully.

If you hire a contractor, make sure their workers are covered with workers compensation insurance in case one of them gets hurt while working on your bathroom.

The biggest problems with do-it-yourselfers and bathroom demolition could be the electrical or plumbing. If the electrical plugs, lighting,switches or wiring need to be removed and you have no experience in this field, leave it to an experienced professional. Be extremely careful working around electricity.

Now the plumbing is a different story. The demolition process of the bathroom will require you to unhook certain water pipes from the bathroom fixtures. If everything goes right, you will simply turn the water supply valve off to the toilet and sink to remove them. Now for the bad news. Sometimes these water valves leak and will need to be repaired or replaced eventually.

These leaking pipes can become a nuisance during the bathroom demolition. If this is the case, try to locate the water shut valve to the entire house and then turn it off until the water leak is repaired somehow. At least stop the water from leaking so that you can continue with the bathroom demolition.

One of the most important things before you start any bathroom demolition would be the location of the water shut off valve to the entire home. Shut this valve off, then turn on your bathroom faucet to make sure the water is turned off completely. If there is still water flowing slowly through the faucet, while the water shut off to the house is turned off, you should repair the water shut off valve to the house before you start your bathroom demolition.

The reasoning for this is simple. If you were to break a water pipe during the bathroom demolition, you need to be able to shut the water supply valve off or you're now at the risk of flooding the entire house with water. If you choose to ignore my advice, at the least have the phone number for some local plumbers in case there's an emergency.