Destruction!

We knew this was coming, but it's still a bit shocking. Yesterday we demolished the spare bedroom.

This picture gives you a good sense of some of the problems:

There are lots of massive holes in the plaster (see white patches on blue area) and the plaster that is there is very soft and broken under the thick coat of shiny blue paint. The ceiling is made up of some very ugly white cardboard tiles; in several spots they are broken and stained, adding to the ugly. That red area is actually paint over wallpaper. Check out the texture:


There is no way to get that shiny paint and wallpaper off without doing further damage to the plaster. Thus, demolition! [Also, it's an opportunity to 1) improve the insulation and 2) see inside our walls, both for curiosity and to see if there are any problems.]

We at 83 Durant are incredibly thankful to our friends, Elizabeth, Ian, and Mike, who gave up their Saturday to break our house with us. It was a long, dirty, and at times dangerous job, and they were awesome! Thank you!

We started with the ceiling, and made our first exciting discovery: someone put the tiles in OVER the old plaster:

This actually works out well. We're going to leave the old plaster and the newer nail boards, and just have the drywall done over that. Less mess. We know (from being in the attic) that there is plenty of insulation above there, and it seems best to let it be.


Red balloons be gone! Also, this picture begins to give you the sense of the DUST we raised. It was really, really, really dusty & dirty.

Here's Ian uncovering the chimney:

It seems, from the circular patch of cement, that there may have been a woodstove in this room long, long ago.


This is the closet after we've removed all the plaster -- those lathes will also go, but we think they look pretty cool.


Another exciting discovery was the true nature of the built-in shelves: they are not original! Here's the pre-demolition situation. On this wall, we have a closet (to the right) and a built-in shelf (to the left):

Once we got through the plaster, we realized there was some rather modern framing around the thing:


Inside the new framing was the original built-in, which is identical to the one directly downstairs from it, in the pink room:


Elizabeth and I went to town on the dry wall behind the area formerly known as the built-in. We will probably put full-width, floor-to-ceiling shelves into this nook:


Here is a scary discovery, though not exactly something we didn't know about already:


It's not a great picture, but what you're seeing in the middle there is our next door neighbor's house. Yup, you can see outside from inside. This is the spot where the fascia boards meet the roof. Someone ripped out the oldwooden gutter and put up new fascia, but for some reason, didn't bring the fascia all the way up to the roof. The gap here, which runs the length of the house, is something our roofers mentioned, and they're going to fix it (hopefully soon). But it's a bit shocking to see it from this side!

Here's an example of some of the completed demolition:

It's roughly the same shot as the first one on this entry. Scary!

Here's a shot of the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom. It was easier to deal with because it didn't have any insulation at all, but it did have the plumbing and the electricity, so we had to be a bit more careful. We did manage to blow a fuse by incorrect handling of the lightswitch box, but no one was injured.


We cannot believe the tremendous pile of trash that this project created. Who knew that all this stuff could fit in the room????



Today we have some cleaning to do. Tomorrow we seek out some drywall contractors, and sometime before we schedule them, we need to install insulation. We have some leftover from a previous job, but we'll also need more. It has been a very busy weekend! Thanks again to Mike, Ian, and Elizabeth -- we couldn't have done it without them.