I took up an offer of help today to demo and haul away the remainder of the drywall in the exam room. Hopefully I didn’t drive away my generous benefactor for the remainder of time.

For those that have been in the side bathroom, this is where the big white cabinet thing used to be. The cabinet itself is now in little pieces in a landfill. After pulling down the nasty reddish paneling behind that, this is what I found. That makes two doors in the same wall. This is the one we knew about previously (that’s my new electrical box in the lower left). The moulding and drywall you see here is all gone now.

This is looking towards the bathroom. All of the drywall and insulation on the outside walls is gone, a portion of the dividing wall into the bathroom is gone, and the ceiling is completely gone.

Alternate view. We hauled over a half a ton of debris from the room out to the dump in two trips. Words cannot describe my gratitude.

The ceiling was never insulated, which explains why the atrium upstairs lost so much heat, and why the doctor eventually had a drop ceiling installed. We threw the flouresecent lighting out, because the tubes were the old single-pole design (impossible to find replacements for) and the ballast in one of the units was leaking black goo into the housing.

Next, I’m going to shut the plumbing off and pull the sink and toilet in the bathroom so that I can gut that entire space and frame it out from scratch. And then I have to figure out a way to get the air conditioner, which is as large as a fridge, out of the window and down to the ground without killing myself or anyone else.