More Demo!

Today I was focused on getting one item complete:  Gut a room.  In bed last night, I mentally prepared myself for the job.  I closed on this one over a month ago, and I have been focusing on outdoor chores and tasks.  The farm is up and running.  The barn is secure.  The chickens are happy.  The pigs are growing.  The fence is tight.  A month ago this was not the case.

But now that the farm is "alive" so to speak, it's time to focus on the biggest chore of all:  the house.  So today's goal was to gut the dining room.  ALL of it.  I didn't know if I could do it, but I thought I could.  I just knew that I wanted to.  I NEED to.  The kitchen gut job is not complete yet, but that's a tricky one.  I still have lower cabinets that need to go, a ceiling that needs to go, outer walls (layers) that need to go.  But since it has water running to the sink, I have decided to leave that room be for now.

Time to gut a dining room!

I arrived at the farm around 9:30 A.M. and started my attack.  The job is quite simple in terms of skills.  Grab a hammer, pound the walls, repeat.  It really is that simple.  But it's work.  It's old-fashioned work.  The plaster does not come off instantly.  It takes constant pounding and breaking the plaster, then finding a way to scrape or peel or pound it off.  The good news is that it is instant gratification.  You pound enough, the plaster falls.  So it keeps you going.

Well, I started with the wall between the living room and the kitchen.  Since I already had the kitchen side of the wall done, this would really open up the area where you could see through the wall!  So I pounded.  Lots.  A man has time to think while pounding...and I am guessing I swung a hammer close to 3000 times today.  I can't verify that, but that is the number I came up with.  Maybe more, maybe less.

I was so sore from swinging an axe and digging with a shovel yesterday, but I was under the idea that hard work works out those sore muscles.  (I assume I'll learn otherwise tomorrow).

The plaster actually came down pretty easy.  And that's "encouraging" only because I have chosen to replace the walls.  You QUICKLY learn where the good plaster is vs. the broken plaster.  One swing of the hammer quickly tells you that.  But most of the dining room was actually pretty bad plaster.  It was loose and ready to come down.

But I did find some new plaster!!!  And, oh, that is like concrete!!!  It's confusing when you first hit it, as you wonder why such a solid hit.  It feels like a solid piece of wood behind it, but it's just a different make-up of plaster.  One of the corners was ROUGH.  The plaster didn't want to break.  I worked around it.  Thankfully, I found out it was a patch job, and the new plaster was over drywall!  So I went behind the drywall and ripped the whole plaster off!  And it's sooooo heavy!  It's hard to think that these walls were holding so much weight.

The work is progressing.

That plaster on the left was solid concrete!

You could see the different consistency in the mix here.  It really looked like concrete.  The original plaster is more uniform in texture and gray in color.

The first wall is done!

Such a dirty job.

What to do with this?!

I can see through my kitchen walls now!

I got half of the walls done and took a lunch break around 1:00 P.M.  But not before hanging with the pigs and chickens!  The day was cool (61 degrees), the wind was calm, and the animals were just delightful today.  The chickens were all grooming their feathers, and all of the pigs were out rooting in the pasture.  It was an overcast, almost misty day, and the animals (and I!) loved it!  I'm happy to see that all 14 pigs were out in the pasture, including the two we castrated yesterday.  And both seem to be doing well, with the black pig even coming up to the fence to be pet!  That surprised me!  But that's great.

Actually, nearly all of the pigs wanted to be pet today, which boggles my mind, because most of them have been afraid to be touched!  But they all came up and several let me rub on them!  I love it.

The pigs were lovey-dovey today.  Someone has been eating corn!

Such a ham for this photo (you see what I did there?)!

Just look at that hair!

After lunch, I tackled the rest of the walls and then started on the ceiling.  That was a bit tricky, as all of the dust falls right on your face!  I was wearing a mask, safety goggles, and a hard hat, but it would still find its way to my eyes.  That's the one thing I need to do differently in the next rooms.  I need to buy ski goggles that suction to my face.  I just couldn't believe the amount of dust that made it past the goggles and into my eyes today.  Not good...nor fun.

The second wall is done!

The walls went pretty easily, although again the exterior walls of the house have that awful, awful blown-in insulation in them that instantly turns into a powder.  That dust gives me more havoc than any of the plaster dust.  It's so fine and just burns the eyes.  I HATE doing the exterior walls.  The rest of the plaster I really don't mind.

I can't see.

The ceiling was slow but methodical.  Again, instant gratification.  I just had to get a rhythm with the hammer.  Swing three times with right hand, switch to three times with left hand, switch to three times with right hand, watch parts fall, move ladder, repeat.  But the plaster kept falling, and I kept forcing myself to work.  It was not fast work, but I was watching the room take shape.

The ceiling being torn apart.  Slow but methodical.

Speaking of which, the wood is solid behind the walls and above the ceiling!  It's old, dark in color, and of all sorts of sizes, but it's solid.  You won't be able to tell when the new drywall is up.  This room was VERY sparse in terms of electricity, too, which I find amusing.  There were two receptacles and one overhead light.  Hardly anything was behind the walls.

In the ceiling, I did find several nests, though.  Lots and lots of grass, a ton of dirt, a couple of eaten corn cobs, and a mud dauber nest.  It's obvious that the animals had entry through the attic and then down a wall cavity or over the ceiling.  But several areas had nests.

I finished all of the plaster around 3:30 P.M.  I had about four hours of plaster removal work in that room.  Then I started the lath removal.  I thought this would go much quicker, but I was actually wrong!  In the kitchen, the lath came off so easily.  In the dining room, it came off, but it added up so quickly!  I had to remove it, then haul it out so I could stand on a ladder.  It's amazing just how much material is removed from ONE room!  The plaster alone is a couple of inches deep all around the entire room and close to 6 inches deep in the corners!

ALL of the plaster is down!  Woo hoo!

Look at that mess!

So.Much.Plaster.

The plaster is down!

A neat panoramic view of the dining room.

I used a pry bar to remove the lath.  And be thankful for those safety goggles!  Some of those pieces fly right off the wood.  Around 6:00, I was getting nervous that I wouldn't be able to finish the room!  I wanted to sooooooooooo bad.  I wanted to say, "Hey, I can do a room a day."  But it was proving to be difficult.

The lath is coming down.  But it instantly creates a mess that is hard to navigate with a ladder!  Also, look how steep those stairs are!

The problem with the lath is that you have to clear it out as you take it down.  It quickly gets in your way!

I pressed on.

The lath accumulates FAST.

This house is built with LOGS!  I love seeing the thick wood that was used to build this place.

Mom came by around that time to see if she could help.  I had her load up the lath into a trash can and haul it to the raging fire.  That lath burns so easily.  That helped me out.  I could now get back to the rest of the lath.  I got this.

It wasn't easy, but I was able to get the entire room cleared out.  There is no light in that room at the moment, so I had to finish before dark!  And it was getting dark in that room!

But I am happy to say that one of the rooms is officially gutted.  And it looks promising for being built back up.  Add new electrical, add some insulation, and put the walls back up!  Oh, that reminds me...yet ANOTHER reason to gut the house.  I found some old wiring in the walls.  Some of the house has been re-wired...others like this room not so much.  But it will be now!  With new Romex and plenty more receptacles!

I raked away the very deep plaster just in case I needed to access the basement.

So I'm happy to get one room done, and at the same time, it's a bit demoralizing, too!!!  I counted 9-10 rooms that have to be done (hallway counted as one).  The laundry room is a small one, so it seems easier than say the huge bedroom upstairs, but it has its own challenges with plumbing and cabinets.  Long story short, the work can be done, but I might hire someone to help.  If I can do a room a day, then in theory hiring one man means two rooms can be done in one day...

The rooms are opening up!  I think the kitchen used to have two doors...one on left and one on right.

Looking through to the kitchen.

It would be nice to have one solid week where I could just get the house completely gutted.  But I think that will cost me.  But I think it can be reasonable, too.  I put in roughly 9 hours today.  At $20/hour, that's $180/room.  Even having just five rooms done would get me so far ahead.

But we will see.  It might come down to my body, too.  I am fine...for now...but tomorrow may be a different story.

But it's exciting.  Once the walls are down, I literally hand over the responsibility to a contractor to do most of the rest (plumbing, drywall, etc.).  So it's almost like I am 10 days away from being able to do that.  But ten FULL days of really hard labor.  And that could mean a month or two depending upon free time.

But the project moved forward today.  The end is in sight...a very distant sight...but I just feel like a big stride was taken in the right direction today.  I have been putting the house to the side for awhile now.  Now it's time to get this gem ready for another 153 years.

(Also, this is totally a side note, but today was one of those days where you just feel right at home at the new place.  Today was so peaceful.  The air was cool, the pigs were happy, the kittens were cute, the chickens were content, the birds were chirping.  I literally said out loud, "I love it out here."  I haven't had too many of those days yet.  I DO love the location, but I haven't really had the feeling yet.  Too much work has had to be done.  But sitting out there on the patio drinking coffee, all was right in the world today).

Then I started the demo.  ha!

I headed home weary and covered in dirt around 7:30 P.M.  An honest day's work.