what was i thinking

I was very busy this Easter weekend. I spent friday evening and all day saturday, like until 8:30 at night, much to the annoyance of my neighbors, gutting our downstairs bathroom. This all started innocently enough back in the fall when the drywall ceiling was falling due to previous water damage. I couldn't stand to look at it and tore the dry wall down one inspired (or insane) afternoon to find that the previous water damage had removed a good portion of the ceiling's plaster as well as damaging the lathe underneath the tub. Soooo I put up plastic bags with duct tape and a staple gun and figured I'd tackle the project later (these first 3 pictures document my fall venture).




Well, March rolls around and I had two contractors come in order to get estimates on various repairs around the house. Both said the plaster and lathe would need to be torn down so that the joists could be examined to make sure they were alright. Visions of the tub landing on my head while on the toilet floated through my head. So Toby picked up the kids on Good Friday and I figured that gave me two whole days to tackle the project. The remnants of the ceiling came down easily enough BUT then I noticed termite damage on one wall, which I tore down, first dry wall then the plaster and finally the lathe. Long story short all four walls had termite damage (the drywall and window moldings/baseboards and one section of lathe). Fortunately all the studs miraculously escaped termite damage. So now I have a dumpster's worth of plaster and lathe in our garage, which I hauled out of the bathroom by filling kitter litter bins full of plaster and lathe and then dumping the bin into Owen & Oona's wagon in the narrow alley between our house and the neighbors and then I'd wheel it to the garage. I didn't want to track this through the house due to the mess factor.





I still have some black soot coming out through two heating registers that access the vent that I removed plaster and wire mesh off of (I thought taking down plaster and lathe was hard, that wire mesh was near impossible). There's a blocked off doorway to the kitchen that makes me think part of this room was originally a pantry. I still have to gut the narrow hallway between this former bathroom and the basement. I'm thinking of opening the whole thing up and redoing the pantry, which would then lead to me needing to gut and renovate the kitchen, which I would love to do but for the lack of funds.




This last picture is my battered arms, fortunately I got a tetanus booster when I saw a doctor last month because I scraped alongside a lot of rusty metal and I had a very large protruding nail gouge me in the ass when I came off the ladder to quickly. Can I tell you, I never knew that my hands, specifically my palms, could ache so much. And I went through two respirator filters making sure I didn't inhale the lead dust and 100 plus years of crap behind those plaster walls. I still felt goofy at the end of it but I think that's just because I exhausted myself. So God knows when I'll get around to completing this project. Does anyone know if it's really difficult to hang drywall?