demolition

Besides painting over at the new house, we are still in the demolition stage of our bigger projects. Specifically in the basement and the attic. We David ripped out most of the basement ceiling before Christmas (besides the pesky plaster around some light fixtures, vents, etc). And man was that a messy job. I'm glad boys think things like that are fun, because I wanted no part of it. I stayed upstairs during that project, yet somehow got sucked into the clean up stage, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of a basement full of plaster. Now, many pounds of plaster hauled to the trash later, this is what the basement looks like. Clearly there's still a lot to do.

With the ceiling opened up we have been able to work on some of the plumbing issues- with varied success. Slowly but surely we are getting working, pressurized, heated water to all the necessary rooms and fixtures in the house. Although it does seem in some senses we are taking one step forward and two steps back and/or we just have a possessed toilet.

Plumbing we leave to the professionals. So we are busying ourselves other places. Like the attic, now that the basement is on hold due to the pipe issues. Just this week David and a friend tore down the walls surrounding the chimney. We drilled a few 1-inch holes in the drywall to investigate what was in fact behind the wall (insulation? a crumbling chimney? nothing?) and once we could verify there were in fact bricks back there, that looked decent, we felt good enough to commence tearing it all down.

Luckily they had already more or less "finished" the ceiling to the chimney. We were concerned we would have to add more drywall in the small space behind the wall. However some insulation, some plaster, and some trim work should cover that mess nicely.

And just so you understand why we wanted to tackle the chimney walls, besides for aesthetic reasons (I mean, if I have to have a large pillar in the middle of a room, it might as well be exposed brick), we did gain at least 4-inches on each side of the chimney. It might not sound like a lot, but when your walking space involves slanted ceilings, 4 inches makes a difference. See before and after for proof.

Ok, maybe it is hard to tell with all that clutter on the floor and the drastic light difference, so just trust me on this one.

And now that we can see the whole chimney we know there were no huge surprises now. Perhaps a few bricks to mud, but nothing drastic. Some good news/ bad news. We found the antenna cable running down from the roof. This is good news because we don't have cable, so we can use the powerful antenna to pick up more channels and ditch our rabbit ears (and now we know where to locate the cord in the house). The bad news is that it is running right next to the chimney (you can see a thin black line on the front right side of the chimney in the bottom pic), so we will probably just have to live with it there and paint it white. Also there are some stains on the chimney that need to be investigated- hopefully just from an old leak. But all things considered we are happy- the ceiling didn't come crashing down or anything- and we can now move on to thinking about light fixtures up there and then onwards to painting!

You know what we'll be doing this weekend....