More ceiling demolition

Will i NEVER be done with ceiling demolition? i got the rest of the bathroom ceiling down and almost half of the kitchen. i was going to stay and finish the rest of the kitchen.....but it just got hot and i wasn't feelin' it. i was wearing a long sleeved shirt to keep the insulation particles off of my arms and i couldn't face another day of it. my husband actually came down, too and worked with me for a few hours. he pulled the 1x4s off this kitchen ceiling for me.

 He also unscrewed dozens of screws that were in the ceiling rafters in this room (the future studio). .. and pulled nails that i couldn't get because they were too close to the screws.

Although he is smiling here....it was a tough job. holding that drill over your head and getting up and down from that ladder.

This ceiling is now all clean...no nails, screws, slats or plaster. got to fix 2 split rafters in this room.

We did get the electricity all run and it is finished. i'm sure Rick is glad to be done with that project. i am going to order some windows next and when he installs those we will also lower the bathroom ceiling about a foot.

The next time i go down there ..... i swear i am not coming home until the rest of those ceilings are all down. i just have the bedroom and half the kitchen to finish. i am sick of ceiling demolition.

I want to do some pretty work. hopefully soon.  everything that would be FUN to do....has to wait till

Later

Demolition Days at the Duck

There was some serious demolition going on at the Duck the last few days. .... ceilings coming down.

And ..... drum roll, please......the GOOD thing is.....my electricity is now all run and i am wired up. i just need to call the electric company to come back out and put my meter back in and hook me up to the pole. Rick spent days sitting on the milk crate....wiring in all the little boxes. the tedious part of the job.

On Tuesday...while Rick was wiring up....i worked on taking down some ceiling in the dining room. i got just a few feet of slats down. tough, nasty, dirty work.

On Wednesday i worked on the living room ceiling. pulling down slats again and insulation. i just got a corner of it done. i was up on the ladder and found piles of insulation up in that corner that was just left up there. about 6 long strips. i guess when they were finished with the job they just left the excess piled up there.

I saw the teenage boy that lives next door - Amos-  and asked him if he wanted to work....and he agreed. this ceiling demolition is for the young...LOL.  so, he came over after school on Thursday and within an hour....had the ceiling in the back room down. give a boy a hammer and he has fun. LOL

Then he moved to the office and got that ceiling down, too. i just need to go up and clean up the edges a bit and take out the nails.

Here is my office ceiling...all on the floor. it takes a lot of bags to pick up all that crap.

Then his mom, Tammy, came over...i guess to check on Amos and make sure i wasn't treating him bad. hahahaha    she said she wasn't doing anything and she could help, too. so i gave her a hammer and she took out the rest of the living room ceiling that i started. she is little but she is fearless and tough.

Here's my living room ceiling....on the floor.

Tammy said she was off work Friday and would come out and help me some more. gee....i like neighbors willing to help you work. so, Friday she took out the dining room ceiling....and then cleaned off all the nails from the rafters in two rooms. it was a long, dirty 6 hour day for her.

She helped me bag up all the insulation and plaster and cart it out to the garage. there are about 60 bags there....awaiting the next dumpster.

And i have learned to bundle the slats up instead of just throwing them in a pile. it is much easer to get them into the dumpster when it is time. so i bundled up all these slats and piled them neatly in a corner of the garage.

On Saturday i took a break for the morning and my sis and i went to the Salvation Army thrift store to see if there was anything interesting there. i scored this tv cabinet for $50. it is in great shape.

I am going to replace that back with another piece of wood without holes in it. there won't be a tv in here....probably quilts or something. 

All in all....it was a great few days of demolition. i'll be down again this weekend for more fun. i have 2 more ceilings to take down...the bedroom and the kitchen. then i believe the major demolition is completed and i can start rebuilding and prettying up. new insulation...drywall....lights...ceiling fans.....fun stuff.

Although i do need some pipes for plumbing, too. i belive that should be next.

So much to do...so little money. hahahahaha      but it will all get done...sooner or

Later

Ceiling demolition

I spent the weekend away from the studio. i went to my sisters and we hung out on Thursday and went to thrift shops and JoAnns and played. Friday we went to Centralia and did more thrift shops and went to buy her hot water heater. we won't even talk about us getting that monster into the house...it weighed 132 pounds...there were 5 steps....it was a BIG box....enough said. 

Saturday i made it over to the Duck. on the agenda was taking out more ceilings. i had hoped for 2 of them. in the back room of the studio one wall had some plywood over it but it wasn't done properly...so i took that out first. i will replace that wall....the correct way. those studs there have to come out, too. they are 2x6s and need to be 2x4s so the plywood on the other side sits in properly.

Then i tackled the ceiling of this back room for the studio. there were 9 2x4s on the ceiling....see those 'white' lines...that's where they were. i thought this would be hard because they were 2x4s and very long...about 16 feet. but once i got an end started...and put my large crow bar in there....they pretty much just popped off and fell on the floor. a couple hours and they were all off. the room was really too small to drag the scaffolding in there...so i just used the ladder. i carted all the boards out to the garage and tried to take down the plaster. but it was up there really well. this was a later addition so the plaster is not old and falling down. i just left it up there for another time.

So after looking around...i saw that the bathroom had 1 board up there that needed to come down. see that all white strip...that is where the 1x4 was attached. it came down pretty easily. the end broke off but i got it all down. i'll probably take that plaster down the next time i go. i hate cleaning up plaster mess. it is so heavy.

Then i looked at the office area. it was the smallest space. i managed to get 2 boards down and part of a third...you can see the end hanging up there. try as i might....i could not get these off that ceiling. i could get the pry bar in there...but it just wouldn't pop off. i finally figured out the problem was that the 1x4s are too flexible...they just bend or break. the 2x4s came off so easily in the first room because those boards are rigid and that helped me to get them down. so i got frustrated here and gave up on this room, too. do you see a pattern here? LOL

Not wanting to admit defeat....i tried the dining room ceiling. the plaster here is falling off in bits and pieces. i managed to get 2 boards off here. and i cleared the plaster off that section as well....since it was falling on me anyway. and i even took out 2 sections of lathe boards. the brown still showing up there is the insulation...that will be a very messy job to get that out. it is all old and disintigrating and DUSTY.

By this point i was getting tired and it was 3pm...so i called it a day. it was rather frustrating that i didn't get more done....but i was trying to be careful and not get hurt...pulling a muscle or anything. so even though i didn't get a lot done....it was progress after all.

I am still waiting to get the contractor back out there to finish hooking up the electric. he is tied up on other larger jobs and i don't get out there often enough. hopefully in the next month i can take a few more days and stay out there and try to get the electric work finished up and more ceiling demolition.

As much as i would like to work on it every week...it will have to wait till

Later

The Duck is getting wired

I spent Saturday and Sunday at the Duck....supervising wiring. and Saturday was COLD. LOL  i tried to stay busy and move around to stay warmer...but there really isn't too much for me to do there at this time. i did do a lot of sweeping up.

But my contractor came in with his helper, Thomas, and they got wiring run. this is the spot in the laundry room where the breaker box will live. Rick is marking wires so we know which breaker is for which room. in the end we wound up running over 1000 feet.

Wires were pulled all over the house. this is the kitchen by the door going out to the garage. the little room to the left (with the red milk crate) is the pantry.

And here ... the front door.

And junction boxes were attached .... too bad the camera lady doesn't have a steady hand. LOL

And over 50 little blue boxes were nailed in and wires pulled into them.

And here

Thank goodness helper, Thomas, is a skinny dude. he got into very tight spaces to pull wire where it needed to go. he spent a lot of time in the attic and in crawl spaces.

If the weather cooperates this weekend i will go back so they can attach all those wires and put the guts in the blue boxes. fun, fun, fun.

And i did decide to go ahead and pull the ceilings down, too. i hoped to leave them in place but it is just not the right thing to do. the insulation .... what there is of it....in the attic is old as dirt and not doing its job so it all has to come out. it is actually easier to just take the ceilings down to get all that insulation out so i can put new up there. and then actually inspect the rafters to see if any of them need to be repaired. i already have found 2 of them that are cracked. and this way i will know exactly what is in my house. and there are pipes up there that need to be cut out, too. more fun, fun, fun. LOL

My job in the ceiling takedown will be to get the scaffolding over there from the Beast and pull off the 1x4s that the ceiling tiles were stapled to. then the guys can pull down the plaster and slats and all that ugly, noxious insulation.

So the next few days will be a flurry of activity to wrap things up in the studio for this month so i can leave again on Friday. so, if you don't hear from me again this week.....i am channeling a whirlwind. LOL

Talk to ya

Later

El Destructo Strikes Again!

Just when i think there is no more destruction to be had....my sister finds me another tear-down job. i had sometime previously torn out the drop ceiling in her kitchen at the beast. now she decided that she needed the boards down also that held that drop ceiling up. the problem was as i was taking off the boards, plaster ceiling parts were falling off also. i think the plaster was just held up by those little boards. and the ceiling had gotten wet a lot so it was not good. so i took down the boards and about half of the plaster ceiling.

 

Yeah, we took down that ceiling fan, too. there were 2 holes cut in the ceiling slats...one of them had pipes from the kitchen upstairs. i guess that is where the leak was years ago. but it is now all down and nothing will fall on your head. just another job for the to-do list....replaster kitchen ceiling.

We wound up with plaster dust all over the house and our plaster dust footprints, too. we carted out 9 milk crates full of plaster pieces for the dumpster. and then had to sweep and mop the floors.

While i was at the beast for a couple days, i also took out the paneling in a bedroom closet. naturally there was painted wallpaper under the paneling. and roamed around the upstairs rooms, taking nails out of walls and old curtain hooks off windows and the like.

We also had a few stumps to deal with. we pulled one out with the truck and i took a chain saw to two more. there is one huge stump that is about 4 foot tall that i started to tackle but my chain came off the saw and was making strange noises. when i brought it home, dear hubby had to order another part to fix it...some hub thing. i don't know. i only know how to USE it...not fix it. LOL

And we ate lunch at the cutest little BBQ place called Chubby's. it was just a little shed set on a parking lot with 3 small booths inside. but it smelled delicious. their baby back ribs were wonderful...very meaty. my sister had a pulled pork sandwich and she said it was good....it had meat falling out the sides. they had lots of people coming in as we ate, too. they told us they had moved from another location in town and i'm glad we found them. we'll go there again one day.

The next excursion into the big city comes in October when my niece arrives in town from Savannah, GA.  we will check out the Octoberfest and have some beer and bratwurst and take her out to the beast so she can see our progress. we also have a trip to the zoo planned and some thrift store adventures.

So i better get busy with customer quilts so i will have some traveling money.