Bath Remodel AskTheBuilder Mortar Shower Pan Removal Part 1

Well, it's another day and you can tell I've made a little bit of progress. I've taken some of the

studs out from the shower. A lot of the material has gone off the walls and it's time now. I want

to start to take out this tile that's on the floor. Don't ask me why these guys did it, I have no clue

But I would have never built it this way. Anyway, over here, you can see it. This is the concrete floor

that the forms the entire basement floor, the entire house and the tile in the main part of the bathroom

That's what it said on top of but for some reason this shower floor they've got

four and a half inches higher than that concrete floor. So So it doesn't really make sense, but they poured another concrete slab on top of this

concrete slab and then they poured a mud floor base on top of that to embed the tile

That mud floor has got a sloped surface. Anyway, to take this out, here's a tip I've learned years and years and years ago

Let's say that you need to take out a concrete slab with a jackhammer

I'm going to use a little jackhammer to do it with a handheld one

The worst thing you can do if you want to make it as hard as possible is go to the middle of the slab and start to break up the concrete The easiest thing to do is to start at the edge like right here and start to chunk off pieces Well the trouble is this

little slab is encased on three sides with wood. So I'm going to cut these wood plates

here out. And we're going to cut them out with a sawzall. And I'm going to, that's going

to free up this side and this side and make it much easier to get this slab out. So that's just

a little simple tip I wanted to share with you. Just think about making it so that the concrete

or anything you're breaking out, when you hit it, it's got some place to go. You know, you don't

want to have it all bound up, you know. It's like you being in a straitjacket, you know, you can't

get your arms moving. So anyway, that's the next step. I'm going to cut those three 2x4s with a

sawzall. You know, here's my fancy all-purpose sawzall. And we're going to then start to

take this concrete slab out. It's going to be a mess, let me tell you. I'm Tim Carter

for AskTheBuilder.com. If you want to discover more home improvement tips, go to AskTheBuilder.com