Interior Demolition in Boise Before a Bathroom Remodel

A guy over in Meridian texted me a photo at nine on a Saturday night. Vanity half out of the wall, mirror still hanging, tub full of broken tile, an open drain staring up at him. He'd started at seven that morning, figuring interior demolition on one bathroom was a one-day job.

He wasn't wrong about the swinging part. That went fine.

It was everything after the swinging that got him.

Most of the demolition I do around Boise isn't a building coming down. It's one room stripped to the studs so a remodeler can start, and somebody halfway through realizing the fun part was also the short part.

What interior demolition in Boise actually involves

A bathroom gut means the vanity, toilet, tub or shower surround, tile, mirror, flooring, and whatever somebody glued down under all of it in 1994. A kitchen adds cabinets, countertop, backsplash and appliances. Sometimes a wall goes too, if the plan calls for it and it isn't holding up the roof.

That's light demolition. No excavator, and usually no permit, since you're not changing the structure or the footprint.

Volume is what surprises people. One bathroom doesn't sound like much until it's stacked in the hallway and you can't get past it.

Tile, mortar bed, old plaster and cast iron weigh far more than they look. A pile you could step over can outweigh a trailer packed with furniture.

Should you do the interior demolition yourself?

If you've got a free weekend, a pry bar, and a shop vac you don't love, the tear-out itself is doable. Demo is the one stage of a remodel where being a little careless is the point. None of it's getting saved.

Two things usually decide it.

First is the haul. Ripping out a bathroom takes a day. Moving that debris to Hidden Hollow in a half-ton with a tarp takes three or four round trips.

The landfill charges by weight, so tile and mortar cost more than the same pile of drywall. Add gas. Add the second tarp you'll buy at a gas station on Chinden after the first one shreds.

Second is the awkward stuff. A cast-iron tub coming down the stairs of a North End bungalow is a two-person problem at best, and the wall usually loses. Granite out of a Bench kitchen is the same story.

That's the part where people stop and text me a photo.

Plenty of folks split it. They knock out the cabinets and drywall themselves over a weekend, then have me pull the heavy pieces and take the whole mess at once. Works fine, and yes, I'd still rather get that call than not.

Heads up: If the house went up before 1980, don't start ripping sheet vinyl or scraping popcorn ceiling until you've had it tested. Plenty of older places on the Bench and in the North End have asbestos in the old flooring and in the black mastic under it. Testing is cheap and quick. Finding out afterward is neither.

Where demolition debris ends up in the Treasure Valley

Not all of it hits the landfill, and it shouldn't.

Anything still usable gets offered up first. A vanity in good shape, a working toilet, a cabinet run somebody could put in a shop or a rental. Idaho Youth Ranch and St. Vincent de Paul take more than people assume, and there's usually somebody in the Valley who'll grab a decent set of cabinets before they ever see a dumpster.

Metal gets recycled. Cast-iron tubs, old sinks, appliances, the copper and galvanized pipe that comes out with the fixtures. That stuff has a home, and it isn't the Ada County landfill.

What's left is honest trash. Broken tile, mortar, old drywall, torn-up subfloor. That goes where it goes.

So what does the haul run? Weight moves the number more than height does. One bathroom's worth of debris is usually a partial trailer load and prices like one, while a full kitchen with cabinets, counters and appliances lands closer to a full load once the flooring comes up.

Timing it so your contractor isn't standing around

This is the one that costs people real money. Tile setters and plumbers from Nampa to Star are booked weeks out, sometimes longer.

Show up Monday with the room still full of the old bathroom and you've burned your guy's day. Maybe your spot in his schedule too.

Plan the demolition to be done and hauled a couple of days before he starts. Not the morning of. Something always takes longer than it should, and it's usually the flooring.

One more thing about leaving debris in the driveway. In January it freezes into one solid block. In March it blows down the street.

Summer's kinder, but nobody loves a pile of busted tile baking beside the garage for two weeks in August. The neighbors least of all.

The bottom line

Demolition is easy to start and harder to finish. Swing away if you want to. Just be honest with yourself about the tub, the counters, and how many trips it takes to make the mess disappear.

If you'd rather skip that stage, text me a photo of the room at (208) 391-0221 and I'll send you a price. Usually I can have it cleared out inside a couple of days, so your remodeler walks into an empty room instead of a pile.