We have a basement apartment that we hope to rent. The ceiling in the apartment living room had clearly been repaired (poorly) from a leak, at least twice before. It didn't look great but it was patched. One evening we were doing some fixer uppers down there when I noticed something... something dreadful. The ceiling looked... worse. It almost looked like it was sagging. That fear was confirmed when I opened a cupboard nearby and the door wouldn't open all the way. I reached up and the ceiling was wet. I swore.
We had a plumber come out to confirm that we did, in fact, have a leak. He poked a hole in the ceiling and a lake released. The toilet in the powder bath above was loose and leaking. Wonderful. What's more is that the plumber said that since the powder bath sat on slate tile it can never truly be level so no matter what we do to fix it, it will always wiggle itself loose and eventually leak. He replaced the wax ring and shimmed the toilet but couldn't warranty his work, because guaranteed the problem would come back. He showed that the past owners had tried to raise the toilet, shim, use bazaar rubber seals and caulk, but nothing would solve our problem until we removed the slate because with it, the toilet would never be even. (Hence the evidence of multiple ceiling patches. This is a chronic problem.) Super wonderful.
(Um, how incredible is that wallpaper?! You can't just buy that stuff. Sneak peek: it's on the ceiling too)
Shimmed toilet
Beautiful and uneven slate
We decided that instead of trying a few "quick fixes", we wanted to just do it right, take out the slate and put in tile. First Seth removed all the damaged drywall from the ceiling. This revealed lots of lovely black mold. He had to keep cutting further back to get all the mold out.
Seth wasn't about the fix the ceiling until he fixed the bathroom and was sure it was fixed. While the boy and I were out of town Seth took out the toilet started removing tile- with the help of Jeff on speed dial and many youtube videos. Unlike the salon tile Seth removed in August, this beautiful slate tile came off in sheets and small chips, much more difficult though now we have a box of slate shards to decorate a planter or make some art project. I got to watch his progress while out of town via dropbox uploads from his cell phone. At times and out of context it was a little scary.
Looks like the sledge hammer got a little out of hand...
The wild eyes of a man left alone with a sledgehammer and a vague idea of what he's doing.
Under the mortar was a layer of linoleum. So out that came too.
It was at this point that the stench increased. Under the linoleum layer was a layer of particle board screwed into the subfloor. The particle board was wet, swollen, and moldy- so out it came. Scary question: how long had it been that way? Also the plastic bracket thing that held the toilet in place was not just cracked but completely crumbling and the bolts were rusted and cracking off- so out it came (Sensing a theme?) It seemed the longer Seth was on the project the more grateful we were that we decided to take it all up instead of trying yet another generation of quick fix.
Finally the subfloor. It was wet but not water logged or moldy. Seth sprayed bleach and put a fan on it for 24 hours. He was finally done tearing out.
Oh, em. Except the trim splintered and cracked apart when he tried to remove it. So- that came out too. NOW he's done tearing out.
