Demolition, week 4

The only major thing left to do now was finish off the living room. So much lath & plaster to tackle!

Ryan demonstrating the lung-safe way to demo, with a gas mask!

Ceiling half done, 3 more walls to go...

We tried a different approach to the walls, but I prefer taking it all down at once

 I was very glad when we were done with this process, I think it took me 2 days to get the plaster dust out of my hair!

Plaster dust much?

Let me also take this opportunity to let you learn from my mistakes... When you have baseboard heating, and plan to demo anything, make sure to protect your heating elements before getting started, otherwise you'll be learning how to straighten heat fins like I will be...

Cleaning up the mess

Off to the fire pit with you, lath!

I can't believe how wide some of these sheathing boards are, 20"!!!

Ryan standing back and admiring all of our hard work!

Found 3 of these guys when we were moving the wood from the deck to the fire pit, they were less than impressed

We got the kitchen cabinets moved to their temporary home in the garage

Beautiful tongue & groove kitchen ceiling under the drywall, we're going to try to re-purpose this elsewhere

Open concept stairs? These will be gone soon enough!

The end of August was also essentially the end of demolition, save a few small items still to do that aren't really worth mentioning. Demo was a lot of fun, but exhausting, and I'm excited to be able to start putting things back together now! I always have the end result in mind, which hopefully will help me keep plugging along when we start to lose motivation. But for now we can take  moment to rest!

Demolition, Day 1

I know the updates have been a long time coming, but August has been a busy month, so bear with me while I get you up to speed.

Thursday 8/2/12 - Friday 8/3/12

Our first 24 hours as home-owners
We closed on the house with the modest intentions of ripping out the existing floors to uncover the original pine floors, refinish/paint them (depending on their condition), and then eventually gutting each room one by one, over time. Well, those plans have, let's say... evolved. But I'll get to that. 

Let's start upstairs, shall we?

Remember that nasty 1970's carpet? Thankfully, no one attached it properly when it was installed, so after detaching the few nails & staples around the perimeters, it just rolled right up. Mom and I had it all ripped out by dinner time on closing day! Now we have bare pine floors, ready for sanding and painting!

Smaller bedroom

Landing at top of stairs

Back downstairs, we wasted no time tearing out the linoleum and rolling up the existing carpet (we'll be reusing the downstairs carpet in the bedrooms until we can install some source of heat upstairs). One layer closer to those wood floors!

Earning my dinner

We all knew that trash compactor wasn't staying, didn't we?

Our first peek at the hardwood floors!!

Starting to uncover them, but still a looooong way to go...

Home ownership isn't official until you get your first pizza delivered, right?