More Walls Down

Today was another demo day.  I am quickly realizing that I won't be living in this house anytime soon if I don't pick up the pace on the demo.  I have had zero luck so far in finding a crew to do the demo.  I am waiting to hear back from one guy, and last night's $25,000 bid was just asinine.

So I prepped myself for a very dirty day.  I picked up a new set of goggles this morning from Wal-Mart and headed for the farm.  Dad met me out there at 10:15 this morning.

What I started with this morning.

I needed his help removing the ceiling fans and tidying up the electrical while the demo is being completed.  So he did the un-wiring and wiring to have lights in the house while it's being gutted.  And then we both worked together to remove the 1/4-inch plywood screwed into the living room ceiling.  It's yet another tedious job.  We are working so hard to UNDO nearly everything the previous owner did.  It's most unfortunate.

The living room still had a ceiling fan and some partial drop ceiling.

The entire living room was covered in 1/4-inch plywood.  Ugh!

But I had a hunch why the plywood was there, and removing it did not disappoint.  The ceiling had started to crumble, so rather than fix it, the owners decided to just cover it up.  That's the theme of this house:  just cover it up.  And that's what the contractor last night wanted to do!  Just cover it up again!

NO!!!

The reason why the plywood was installed in the first place: crumbling plaster.  Here it is missing altogether.

Yet another section of the ceiling that had lost the original plaster.  The previous owner just covered it up!

The large section of ceiling missing.

The room is SO big with the ceiling removed and the bright colors exposed.

Once the ceiling was down, Dad asked if he could help anywhere else while I did the dirty demo work.  I sent him upstairs to start removing the 1/4-inch plywood up there.  Yes, yet another room has plywood over the top.  It's holding up crumbling plaster again, and I want to take it all down to the studs.  So he worked up there while I started banging walls.

The closet had 1/4-inch plywood EVERYWHERE!  Walls AND ceiling!  Ugh!!!

This house is seriously a mess.  More 1/4-inch plywood in the closet.

And I did that for the next couple of hours.  I probably hammered on the old plaster from 11:00-1:15.  We took a lunch break around then.  Dad was making progress upstairs, but the work is just so slow.  There are just so many screws, and it takes such force to keep pressure on the drill to get those screws out.

The demo begins!

The walls are coming down.

Let the mess begin.

Lots of screws to remove.  Probably a couple hundred.

Once back at the house this afternoon, he worked up stairs again while I went at the ceiling.  The ceiling was in really bad shape, so about 70% of it came down really easily.  The rest was still in decent shape and required decent hammering.  Slowly but surely, though, the room was going down to studs.

The closet is getting brighter!

The ceiling is down!  Look at that mess!

The ceiling is down.

I started tackling the lath after the plaster, but I wasn't able to get the entire room completed as the lath made it too difficult to move around the ladder.  But the lath is probably 70% removed.  I elected to not remove it from the exterior walls where all of the dirty, dusty blown-in insulation is located.  That stuff is just so nasty to work with.  I'm going to hold off on that.

Starting to remove the lath.

I ran into this problem numerous times today.  My goggles constantly fogged up and made it so I couldn't see.  All day long.

The ceiling is down!

Some of the blown-in insulation made it into the ceiling.  I didn't remove this because of the excessive mess it makes.  It turns to a fine powder when touched.

The lath is coming down.  It makes it sooooooooooo hard to move around the room.  You have to clean up as you go.

More beautiful post-frame construction methods found.

A couple of interesting finds today:  the chimney in the living room is actually supported on the outer wall by wood.  The wood slopes back towards and wall, and all of the weight is put on the exterior of the house.  There is a hole in the middle of the brick where the stove would have vented to.  So the secret has been discovered...this was an actual brick chimney.  Unfortunately, with no purpose or function, it will all likely have to be removed.  Yikes.

The chimney is found.  The plaster was not coming off easily, so I am going to wait to chip it with a chisel.

Second, we found a very poor electrical job in the ceiling.  Two junction boxes were actually joined together and then sent off to various locations.  They just hung loose on the ceiling.  Dad said this is very much against code to have junction boxes inaccessible.  I'm not surprised in the least, but it was an interesting way of doing things.  It almost looks as if though they ran a hot wire from the basement to this box and then used that box to feed it to various rooms in the house.

Third, I have had some sort of animal living in the ceiling.  There was so much nest material pulled out again today.  I'm not really sure what creature it would have been, but hopefully in re-doing this house I can close off that entryway!  I can't figure out in the slightest where the access is coming from.

One of a few crevices that had nest material.

And fourth, behind the plywood upstairs in the tiny room, we found a girl's name (Helen) and numerous math lessons or tables.  Whether it was for fun or teaching, who knows.  But there was quite a bit of math scribbled on that wall up there.  I haven't figured out who the Helen would be quite yet.

Helen M and her math table.

Practicing her name?

I haven't figured this one out.

Helene.  A twist on the spelling?!

More math and various scribbling of words.

So today was a little bit of forward progress but not nearly enough.  I need a crew.  I am definitely able to tear down walls, but I can't make much progress doing partial rooms at a time.  I still have at least seven rooms remaining.  I am going to need to pay for outside help...I just wish I could find a hard worker that is reasonable in price, too!  Why is this so hard to find?!  Going by last night's contractor's prices, I saved myself $2000 today (based off the roughly $3,000 per room quote he gave me).  Ridiculous.

How I left the house tonight.  What a mess.  Is there hope?!

But I'm very well aware that I can't do anything with the house until it's gutted.  And we are quickly coming up on summer.  I have a goal of the house being totally gutted within the next 15 days.

My little by little needs to turn into a lot by a lot soon.