Guess what I did yesterday and today? If you guessed "pull down plaster" you get a gold star!
Here's why I wear a respirator. Some of the stuff falling out of the walls is nasty.

You know that part of human nature where the thing you tell yourself NOT to think about is the only thing you can think about?
That's what happened today as I'm ripping down lathe & getting rained on with crap. "Hmmm...wonder what's in these walls." Mice, mouse droppings, bugs, bug droppings. Just try to not think about it. It's the grey/black clumps of hair that creep me out the most - I'm just hoping its the horse hair binder they used in the plaster and not something else. bleh.

These wall pics are from Sunday night. I finished pulling down lathe in the dining room exterior wall. The other walls will just have drywall over the lathe.
A bit of Sunday & all of today were devoted to the front hallway. The pic, taken Sunday, shows the plaster down in a section. I actually have this corner down to the studs with what I did after work. I left around quarter of 9 & it was too dark to take a good pic.

I'm about ready for another trip to the dump.
Pic 1: 1 day's breathing in left mask vs. new one.
Pic 2: Living room down to the studs
Pic 3: Starting the plaster/lathe removal in the hallway.
Pic 4: Trailer 'o junk

The electrician is supposed to be here today, and in the middle of next week we're expecting the drywallers. So I'm working madly on pulling down the remaining walls we planned to do before the drywallers get here.
In the entry hallway you can see the plaster on most of the walls and a section of the old '70s paneling (since painted) on the right. Next up in this room is pulling down the plaster. The section under the stairs was really soft, so I'll hope the rest is as easy to pull down.
I've also gotten a bit more down in the living room.

Dad brought the trailer over, so I was able to take out all the plaster that was sitting in piles throughout the main level.

Brad got the kitchen windows in & they look really good! Shortening them will allow me to run a kitchen counter along much of that exterior wall. The kitchen was really short of both storage and counter space, so I think this will really help.
I also got the flooring for the kitchen ordered. I ended up going with the Allure cork-ish flooring from Home Depot. It's a vinyl plank floor - not unlike Pergo. It was the best option, since it was much less expensive (and softer to stand on) than tile, more durable than cork and wood, and thinner than all of the above (an issue with the match-up with the dining room).

Pic1: Front entry
Pic2: Dining room plaster - still working on it!
Pic3: Kitchen windows before
Pic4: Kitchen windows now - not quite to "after"!

You know, it will be really nice when I stop pulling things down and can start putting them back together! I think Brad just shakes his head now at the messes I make over the weekend. We agreed that the living room walls were in rough shape, so we'll add that to the drywall list. This means the plaster currently on the walls needs to come down. Unskilled labor should do this kind of thing. That would be me.

So today I worked on pulling down the plaster. Some sections came down really easily - like they were just hanging out waiting for the wallpaper to come down. Others were a total PITA, completely stuck to the wall. Those sections required a lot of crowbar & hammer work. That part sucks.

But I finished the East wall and a good chunk of the north wall (this is helped by the fact that 50% of the north wall is the archway to the living room, so there wasn't all that much to do. Hopefully I can finsh doing the rest of it after work this week.
It's probably weird, but I think the lathe is really cool looking - I like the texture from across the room & up close it's cool to see the guts of the house. Like if I were into modern, I'd probably just put fiberglass sheating over the wall so you could still see the lathe...and then throw around words like postmodern, deconstruction, and "stimulating unpredictability"... But I'm not. So I'll cover it with drywall.

Brad got one of the windows in the kitchen changed out; I'll show pics when they're both done.

The only other interesting thing going on is that Jeff the electrician is supposed to start soon - hopefully tomorrow. Did I mention that my house the original, state of the art 1911 wiring? This knob & tube stuff would still be relatively safe, except that the insulators & casings become brittle over time & are favored by rodents, so it's generally seen as a fire hazard now. (It also lacks a grounding wire)
Since there's still live current running to at least part of the house through these wires, Jeff will be pulling & rewiring those sections. He'll also add electric in a couple spots for the remodel, including to kitchen cabinet lights & that sort of thing.

Pic 1: East wall - on the left is the front hallway, to the right is the kitchen. Through the window is the eat-in banquette.
Pic 2: North wall (stripped) & west window in the dining room
Pic 3: My stone foundation & light coming through the kitchen subfloor
Pic 4: Electricity by Edison

So the other day I wanted to see what was going on under the floor in the kitchen. You know, because that loose flap of linoleum was just sitting there, hanging there over the edge of the stairs, taunting me. That one was so easy to pull up, so I grabbed my trusty crowbar and pulled up the 3/4 inch of particle bard. Under that were dark tiles with a thick paper/tar backing, then wood subfloor. Hmmm... not the pristine, finished wood floors I was hoping for.

After a bit of googling, I realized I'd probably uncovered the original asbestos tiles installed in the early part of the last century. Oops. Well, at least I didn't crumble it up my hands and sniff it!

So a call to asbestos remediation later...and yeah, it's hard core asbestos. I'm going to have them remove it rather than just covering it up again.

So in other news that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, I got all the drop ceiling down in the kitchen.

Pictures:
1. Asbestossy mess
2. Drop ceiling ugliness
3. Oooh. Eight feet of exposed wall beauty.

What I learned:
When in doubt, wear the respirator.

Had some internets issues yesterday, so two updates today. Yesterday I muscled down most of the wood paneling in the library. The paneling stopped where the drop ceiling was, so it all needed to go before the drywall can go up.

Pictures:
1: Before
2: blocked in piping for upstairs bathroom
3: exposed wall next to window

What I learned today:
Close your mouth before yanking on nails in old plaster.
The idea of painting this room dark brown/practically black was definitely out after feeling how much of a black hole it was with the exposed walls.

Today Brad, contractor extraordinare, came over & we made a game plan for doing the renovation. Then the rest of the afternoon we did demo, starting with the downstairs bathroom. He did some of the bigger things I don't know how to do myself (removing toilet, shutting off water & removing sink) while I starting pulling down the wall paneling.
I'm noticing a trend with surfaces in this house. Seems that every previous owner has added a layer of paint (or 2 or 10), flooring, wall, or ceiling without removing the one that came before it. The result over the 99 years is that there are about 15-20 layers of paint/wallpaper in the living room and so many laers of paint on the moldings that all the detail is lost. The bathroom follows suit, with enough layers of wall board that they're flush with the 3/4 inch molding around the door. I'm bucking the trend by taking it down to the original wall, which we'll re-drywall in this room.
So the top layer board is likely the 80's reno: cream pressed tile board w/ little blue flowers. Kinda country/Dutch tile look. This was painted white more recently. Under that is a snazzy beige/gold board that was both on the walls and the ceilings (see second picture). A disco light and some LSD and this bathroom would have been trippin' back in the day. Under that is the original plaster with some interesting colors (lavender bathroom (ceiling, walls AND trim), anyone?) - made more vibrant by the pretty gross mold. It isn't currently damp, but I called over the mold guy to check into it anyway.

Pictures:
One: "As is" when I moved in
Two: From the same vantage point, mid demo
Three: snazzy ceiling
Four: privacy wall from the tub/toilet side.

Things I've learned so far in this house:

• Fiberglass is the "no-seeum" bug of the remodeling world. You can't see it, but it hurts like a bitch.
• You can destroy just about anything with a crowbar and hammer.

I loathe drop ceilings.
I don't know why. Maybe it's because I associate them with office buildings or finished basements. But I knew I didn't want them in my house. Luckily, there are only two offending rooms in the house: the kitchen and the little room off the dining room which I plan to make my library. I could say that it's going to be "the den" or "the office", but "the library" just sounds sweet. And those 14 boxes of books in the storage unit have to go somewhere.
So today I took all the drop-ceiling tiles out so I could see just what was going on behind the scenes. The kitchen wasn't too bad, other than one corner that had some water damage. It looks like old damage, but I'll check with Brad-the-awesome-contractor tomorrow to make sure. I was happy there's electric in the ceiling where I wanted it. The ceiling was likely put up in 1980, based on the pristine extra tile sitting up there, wrapped in 1980 newspaper. Did you know that Jimmy Durante died?












The library is a little more problematic. From what I can tell, the ceiling and wood paneling went in around the same time. The paneling only goes up to the drop ceiling; above that is some iffy plaster/wallboard and plaster lathe. I'm guessing this remodel also put in the upstairs bathroom (PVC pipe). I'll get the real scoop from Brad on what's to be done tomorrow.

And the reason I won't be getting much, if any, stitching or knitting done in the next couple months:
I bought a house in TC. It's really cute, and I'm in love with it...with a few exceptions (You're perfect, now change!) The layout is great and I fell in love the tall ceilings and the way the rooms on the main floor open into each other. The previous owners made some nicer, expensive, but non-cosmetic improvements like a new roof, water heater, and replacing some of the old windows.
So I get the fun of doing the insides in a way that, hopefully, stays true to the house while still making it look nice. The house was built in 1911, making this it's 99th birthday. It'll have to get a Smucker's shout-out from Willard Scott.
The realtor spec sheet says it's a Victorian, but other than a little gable trim on the outside, it doesn't look much like one. It could be that when they put on the aluminum siding that something got lost, or just the way it's always been. In my research on Victorian houses, there are some non-gingerbread-y, not so over the top sorts, which mine is probably like. So I'm thinking of simple American decor, nothing too over the top Victorian, and nothing too modern.
I closed on the house Friday, and yesterday Dad & I took some tools over so I could get going.
From here on out, I'll be showing a bits of what I'm doing and learning along the way!