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, Week 2

Bye bye chimney!

The existing chimney for the house was a joke. It appeared to have once been used for an old wood stove in the dining room, but the only thing hooked up to it at purchase was the kitchen range hood. However, it had a steel cap on it at the top, so it wasn't doing any venting! Worst of all, it ended half way down the dining room & kitchen wall, and we weren't even sure if it was being supported by anything. We knew it had to be one of the first things to go.

Starting at the top

Down to the 2nd floor

Out the window with the debris

Only dented the yard a little!

Ted and Ryan tag-teamed the first floor demo

You can see through to the upstairs!

Cutting out the ceiling so we can take down the wall

Open concept baby!

Oh, it feels so good!

While we were at it, we tore out the old beadboard ceiling in the dining room. It pained me to do, I would have loved to re-finish it, but it was just going to be more work than it was worth. We also discovered that the floor boards sagged 3" in the center of the room, so we would have had to take the ceiling down to true up the floors anyhow...

The pile of ceiling rubble