best practice transitioning from one datatype to another

Another UUID question... I was hoping to put this off for a while, but it looks like it's going to need to happen sooner than later. Rats! I keep telling myself transitioning to core datatypes is good for the soul.

 

While transitioning from 8.1 to 8.4, I need to transition to the internal UUID type in place of the contrib/uniqueidentifier module. I've built the database around uniqueidentifier, so nearly every table has one column of that data type. It's going to be tedious to

 

ALTER TABLE foo ALTER COLUMN bar SET DATA TYPE uuid;

...repeat 600 times...

 

I'll also have to drop and reload the views and the rules on tables. It'll be tedious even if the tables have no data in them.

 

Can anyone recommend a better/faster way to make the transition?