Demolition Man

What was up... Must come down.
In order to get going on the project, the first step was clearly to do some demolition work. There were bits of plaster that were coming down from the ceiling, and damage around the windows on either side of the room. First, a study of those windows. Mike identified the need to fix up these windows and generously volunteered to do this repair. The photo on the left is during demolition phase, which included removing loose plaster, and removing the old counterweights from the original windows. Closing up these voids and sealing up around the windows would help with air infiltration when all was buttoned up, and this falls in the category of "doing things the right way." In order to not give Mike nearly enough credit for his careful work, I've quickly posted another photo with the work completed that will seem like it took no time at all. He meticulously repaired and patched this and I'm sure it will last for generations! The photo on the right shows it all closed up and finished. He was even careful enough to get a nice surface finish, despite the 11" or so of wall we would build out from it, and 2 layers of insulation that would eventually cover it. If anyone ever has the bad taste to re-do our work, they'll be delighted by our forethought!

You will no doubt also notice the plaster missing from the ceiling area. This is what we in the hlogging business call a "segue." Mike got a start on the plaster removal one day while I was at work. He showed me his method for bringing down the plaster and lath underneath, making sure that I took careful note of the finer points. Once he was sure I was fully aware of the method, he informed me that this was to be my first big responsibility!

The process of bringing down plaster is deceptively simple. The original plan was to shove the slim end of a pry-bar under a tiny bit of plaster, and take tiny chunks of plaster in hand, then throw them into the bag before they could hit the floor and create lots of plaster dust. This plan was rubbish. The need to go back and pry off the lath underneath roughly doubled the work involved, so the improved plan was to start by pulling off lath, and pull the chunks of plaster down as they came (more easily this way than the previous anyway!)

With this new method, I began to make satisfying progress and cut through the work much quickly. It was extraordinarily messy work, and incredibly unpleasant. The main reason why this should be so laced with suffering is what was on the other side of the wood lath: about 115 years of coal dust. Sure, most of that was deposited there in the first 25 years or so, but the Industrial Revolution's vestiges made themselves known with each piece of ceiling I brought down. This put a fine black dust all over, well... my entire house. Fortunately, I had the realization how hilarious it would be to laugh at my misfortune. See if you can see why I might complain about this work from looking at the next photo. This picture is not quite in strict chronology, but it documented the last day that I suffered through coal dust. You can see the area where my safety glasses covered, as well as my respirator. It's important to note, of course, that I'm not wearing a black long-sleeve shirt for the photo. That was the end result of a night upstairs working on plaster removal. Basically - a pretty awful task. You can see how happy I was to know I was done with it.

Next Up...
I gloss over a bit more prep work (e.g. caulking windows and such), and we start talking about framing!