The Progress

Drywall>lathe>plaster 
Years ago, my mother and aunt had taken down the walls in the kitchen and pantry/hallway to basement stairs. Growing up I always thought it looked ugly and now I'm glad because I don't have to do it!

We have taken down almost 3 complete 9' 5" walls.  In my  heading I said lathe before plaster because the plaster is so old, it's already fallen down to the floor between the studs.

My dad's method of removal is plain old smash with a crow bar. His way relies on strength and is messy.  My method is to find the seams of the drywall, cut them with a utility knife and pry it off in as big a chunk as I can. It starts slow but then I have a giant piece off and it's not messy.  Drywall removal is not messy. Plaster is messy. Old dried up plaster. Try never to sweep plaster. Dust monster!  Nick is very good at removing lathe fast.

We cut the lathe strips on the table saw to manageable lengths to feed our wood stove.  They burn fast and hot.  Easy waste disposal there.  The plaster and drywall we put into large (40 gallon) rubber trash cans.  We missed trash day this week unfortunately due to laziness and snow.

Winter work is hard.  You don't want to leave your cozy warmth to go work in the cold house, start a fire, move your butt, get dirty, get hot, stop working, get cold and then go home.  Snow is also a deterrent because Dad has a small pickup truck that may not navigate the unplowed roads so well. I also can't see working in the hot summer either. I long for March.

We are in the midst of what I am going to call 'Trash Clogged' which means the current level of trash in the house is impeding the production of more trash otherwise known as demolition.

We have gone to Best Buy with giant printers the last few days. It's always the same guy and he never comments or questions us. I like that sort of professionalism.  It's none of his business and he keeps it that way.  Thank you, sir. You have a good day too.

Here is the progress in picture format:

The yellow highlights walls that are already removed. The green highlights the next targets. You may notice we are avoiding external walls.  It's winter right now and I don't need to feel that extra bit of cold.  Save it for later.

Nick and I went to coffee and sketched out more floorplans.  We need to move the stairs to make room for a bathroom.  I am working with online stair calculators to determine feasibility.  Currently, the stairs are parallel with the floor joists but we thought about changing them to run perpendicular and then worried about floor support.  It would also be in the kitchen, shrinking its width considerably.  I was also lamenting the small living room. 12x12 essentially. We are currently in a bedroom that's 12x14.  Call me spoiled.  I gave in and listened to Nick's idea of knocking out the top bedroom. Opening it to the living room and putting a two flight stair case there. The front door (top) would open to the first flight going up about 2-3 ft then 3ft landing, turn right going up to the upstairs.  We still have to have the center support beam going through the center of the house. So the living room is not totally open. Here is a layout:

This allows the kitchen to remain rather large, perhaps we could add a small custom island.  This also allows for a larger bedroom (ours) on the main floor. In this plan we put the bathroom next to the stairs instead of the bedroom and bath swapped. We are not sure.  It makes sense to put the bathroom centrally located but then we have to enter our bedroom through the kitchen. Meh.  You can see I left a partial bit of the center wall in. We are going to have to research modifying it to have arches or something similar. Give that entryway/living room a great eye piece and open feel. The downside in this design in that there is a window right where the closet would be in the bedroom.  We put the closet there to muffle bathroom sounds and there is a window on the opposite wall. Harrumph.