Christi and I have always talked about renovating our main bath, by ourselves, but never really found the time or the motivation to start the project. So while she's in Nebraska for work for two weeks, I thought I would get the project going myself and see how much I could get done before she came home. *As a note to those reading this, Christi didn't mind the chair rail that went across the bathroom, but I did. Little did I know that this would be the toughest part of the project ... so far. As with the fish tape tutorial, hopefully I can teach some people out there the right things and wrong things to do when doing a project like this without professional help.

The bathroom isn't the biggest place in the world (about 7'x4'), so the pictures were a little tough to take, even with my 18mm lens on the Canon. If you can't see much from the pictures, this might be one of those you had to be here to know what's going on projects, and if you haven't been to our place, hopefully the first time you come over, you'll see a sweet new bathroom.

On to the process:

• Take a bunch of pictures before you start in case you have to tell the contractor you hire that this is what it used to look like. Overviews here, here and here.
• Have fun ripping everything off the wall, including the hideous chair rail, and then punch a fist size hole in the wall while removing ... the chair rail.
• Crack open a beer, realize you have no clue what you're doing and call for expert advice.
• Listen to your father, because he may or may not have experience in the subject, and get back to work.
• Learn how to patch a hole by applying a wire mesh over it, filling the holes with wall compound, realizing everything will be alright and remind yourself to thank dad later.
• Rip everything out of the bathroom. This includes the chair rail (yes!), shoe molding and base molding, vinyl floor, toilet and vanity. Then take the mirror off the wall and realize one of the previous owners did a horrible job patching a medicine cabinet and think of how great your hole repair job is compared to theirs.
• Worry what you're going to do about it, and then realize you'll just buy a big mirror to cover it up and hope the next owner doesn't read this blog (it's really not that bad).
• Take more overview pictures, here and here, to show off the sweet progress you've made in the first day.
• Keep the injuries to a minimum by only slicing up a knuckle or two.

All in all it was a good day, and hopefully a lot more can get accomplished when I post the second part to this series.