Demolition, Week 1

Everything seemed to be moving according to plan, pulling up carpet & masonite to reveal the hardwoods underneath, until I got to the corner at the front of the house, where the living and dining rooms meet. I got stuck here, and needed to remove a few pieces of trim in order to get the masonite free. Well, morbid curiosity got the best of me, and then this happened:

Oops! Would this be categorized as excavation, or archaeology?

Hello, can of worms! At this point we re-evaluated (read: threw logic out the window) and decided "screw it, let's take it down to the studs"! Onward ho...

Down came the drop ceilings...

...to reveal original lath & plaster ceilings in the living room...

...and some gorgeous bead board in the dining room (unfortunately not salvageable)

In the flooring-uncovering-process, we also discovered some boo-boos that decided for us that we will be painting the original wood floors, as opposed to refinishing them.

Damaged wood due to wet boots

Needless to say, I'll be learning how to patch hardwood floors soon

 When brainstorming about the project scope, we initially planned to take out the weird half-chimney, and at the same time cut the wall it's in down to a half wall in order to open up the rooms a bit more. However, once we pulled the drywall off that wall, let's just say the wall wasn't constructed how we imagined it would be... I have never in my life seen a wall constructed solely out of boards!  No studs, no electrical, nothing logical, just a solid wall made of boards! No wonder the electrical situation in this house is so screwed up! The only electrical on that wall of the kitchen was run through what used to be the doorway, hence the "strip" power they had all over the place... Sheesh. At least we know the wall can come out now!

Now we know what was holding up the chimney...

We also discovered that there is wood sheathing on the inside of all the exterior walls, through which we could tell there is absolutely no insulation. So it turns out to be a good thing that we decided to go balls-to-the-wall crazy gutting, because now we can get some insulation in the walls before winter and (hopefully) save ourselves a lot on heating! Blessing in disguise!

We're getting there!

Cabinets are down in the kitchen, ready for chimney demo!

I even got a peek at the wood floors under all the layers in the kitchen!

Chuckie found a good hiding spot from all the construction noise

Never one to be wasteful, Ryan got 2nd use out of the construction debris in the first of many fires to come...