It's all too evident the shower/bunker was constructed in the mid 50's, when global nuclear war was expected to commence at any moment; the tile was set very solidly in a bed of concrete about eight meters thick (using metric makes the exaggeration sound even more intimidating, no?), underlying which was a sturdy metal mesh which gave the concrete further resilience. Jessica, undaunted, donned gloves, glasses, and a dust mask and brought down two "walls" worth of tile with her mighty hammer.
What you see remaining are the bits of concrete that remain clinging to the metal mesh, which we'll hopefully be able to rip out in big sections once all the tile's taken care of.After the tile's gone, we'll be pondering the removal of the little section of wall. We presume it's there purely to form the third side of the shower and that taking it out won't cause any problems, but we'd really like to be 100% certain before we start yanking studs out. Does anyone know how we might tell for sure?
2 comments:
It's not the easiest to explain. Go up in the attic to see if the wall is supporting the joists. Ceiling joists will be going opposite (90%) to supporting walls. If the attic floor joists are resting on that wall, there's a pretty good chance it's a supporting wall, especially if you have one coming from either side and they meet above that wall. If that wall is taken away, they would come together & fall down. Check to see if there's some kind of beam above that wall that's resting on the wall. Pretty much, you just look to see that if you took out the wall, would everything fall or would it be okay.
Thanks for the info! I talked to Papa about it a couple days ago, and between the two of you I think I've now garnered the wisdom I need to make a sound judgment. I'll venture up into the attic and evaluate before giving Jessica and her hammer the green light. ;-)
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