Dude, Where's My Floor?!

Well, the Taj continues to surprise, what with its little quirks and idiosyncracies and....what's the word I'm searching for?  Oh, yeah...the house is nutballs.

The plumber, who has yet to be nicknamed because he may in fact be too amazing for a nickname and may instead just get a halo, came by on Saturday to go over a couple things.  He's thinking he can start later this week, but he needed the floor out of the master bath.  He quoted us $250 to take out the floor and remove the debris.  Like an out-of-body experience, I heard me say to the guy, "No problem."  Inside my head there was that cavernous echo from horror movies, so it sounded more like, "Noooooo proooohhhhhbleeeeemmmmmmm."  And then there was demonic laughter from somewhere.

Fabulous Niece Rebecca agreed to stay at Uncle Todd's Cabin while Michael napped and so Sunday afternoon, I got to swinging the sledgehammer.  Given that the floor was already falling apart, I thought this job would be easy-peasy.  Oh, SO not true!  There were four layers to take up...2 layers of vinyl flooring, then a layer of crumbly pressboard-type stuff, then a thin layer of plywood.  It was a huge mess and most of it came up in about 6-onch sections, which meant many, many trips to the curb with the world's tiniest wheelbarrow.  And spiders!  (You have to say it like an old Jewish woman in New York...SHPEYDUHS!)  Egads, there were spiders and crickets and quite possibly dead bodies, but I was not about to go spelunking under there to see.

In the end, I only got the floor completely off the main part of the bathroom.  The smaller room to the left, that had previously housed the toilet and shower, still has the plywood, but the other 3 layers are gone.  And the toilet is gone.  THAT was a job for one tired chick on her own!  The toilet is now sitting in the middle of the master bedroom floor, because that is the precise spot I was standing in when I decided I couldn't carry a toilet another step:

Gives new meaning to "en suite" doesn't it?

Well, I didn't get it all done, but I got most of it, so I guess we'll save some of the $250.  We'll have to cut more elsewhere.  The good news is, we're all going back to the Taj this weekend, so maybe Shawn and I can get more done.

In the meantime, here's the bathroom, waiting for the plumbers to come and move EVERY SINGLE FIXTURE:

We're making progress.  I have to remind myself of that.  Sometimes it just has to get worse before it gets better....