New York Renovator

Believe it or not, there’s a system to removing plaster and lathe from old walls and ceilings. Oh, sure, you could simply get your hammer or crowbar and start blasting away. But plaster and lathe demolition is horribly, horribly dirty. Horribly. You think you have the furniture in the next room protected with plastic sheeting? Ha ha ha! Get your duster ready. We live in our house as we wreck it room by room, and try to be very careful with our demolition. And even after all our sealing the heat vents, duct-taping doors and boxes with plastic sheeting, and gearing up in heavy clothing and bandannas, we still walk out of the room at the end of that day caked in dust.  The stuff is just so pervasive.

Even so, there IS a way to reduce the mess. My methods are tried and true. Someone may have a better method (I’ve yet to see it) but this works, so far, for us.

1. Remove all the plaster FIRST. Then remove the lathe.

If you remove the plaster and lathe on one wall all at once, you’ll wind up with a big, dangerous mess. Lathe will be everywhere with plaster sections collapsed all around it. And since lathe contains nails — if your home is old, the nails will be old and rusty — the material is serious safety hazard. It’s best to first remove the plaster and shovel up the debris, THEN remove the lathe and pick up the wood.

By the way, YES, that IS a salmon pink ceiling. It was underneath a drop ceiling we removed. The trim in this room had once been mustard yellow....

2. Start small. then work in “sheets.”

You only need to create a small hole at first, and then a narrow strip. I always begin in the center of a wall, so I can have two people removing plaster from each side.

I start by pounding a hole in the center of the wall with a hammer. Then, I chip a long, narrow strip from the ceiling to the floor.

3. Use a spade to cut off large sheets of plaster from the lathe.

Don’t use a crowbar or hammer to remove the plaster from the lathe. You’ll wind up with a mushroom cloud of plaster dust over your home! A spade is a small shovel with a flat blade. By the way, DON’T use a typical shovel for removing plaster, either. The rounded end, so perfect for digging holes, will only shear off a tiny portion of the plaster. It’s not worth all that effort.

My spade is very short, about 3 feet high. It has a grippy-type handle, and it’s perfect for removing large sections of plaster quickly and easily. Insert the end of the spade into the narrow strip of plaster you’d made with the crowbar. If the plaster is really sticking to the lathe behind it, you’ll need to ram the spade in. Now chisel the spade in between the plaster and lathe, to separate the plaster from the lathe. You may need to gently push up on the plaster with the spade, to force the plaster to break away from the lathe but not break off. The plaster will fall off in large sheets and the work will go much more quickly.

4. Keep the room tidy.

That sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? But the goal here is safety. And morale. NOBODY like slogging into a filthy workplace. Chop off large sections of plaster, and have a few folks pick up the plaster sections as you go along. We used a gravel shovel (another flat-ended shovel, but much more weighty) to shovel plaster into large garbage cans.

If you pick up the plaster as you go along, it will help reduce dust. You will not need to crunch over mountains of plaster to get to the next section. And believe me– shoveling up crunched and compacted plaster is a LOT more difficult than shoveling up freshly-removed sections of it.

Cleaning the room at the end of the work day did wonders for the morale, too. I found that we were much more likely to start the day with a little more vim and vigor when we entered a clean room to start our work than to begin in a room that was trashed. We lived in the house as we worked, so it was important to keep things clean.

5. Use a spray bottle with water.

It may sound corny, but it helped reduce the dust for us. When the dust in the air got too messy, we used a spray bottle filled with clean water to mist the air. The droplets of water grabbed the dusty particles and the weight of gravity forced it to the floor. Now, it’s important to go easy on the water, or you’ll end up with a muddy pool of plaster in your home.

6. Set a goal, every day.

My modus operandus for a day was to set a goal first thing in the morning, and that included cleanup. When we gutted our kitchen and dining room, I gave us one day to do half the kitchen (three walls) and a second day to do the other half (the fourth wall and the ceiling). It helps keep you focused, so the demolition doesn’t drag on forever. It’s very physical, laborious work. At the end of the day, we were EXHAUSTED. But settings goals helped, because we knew we HAD to have our house back again, and fast.

7. Be prepared for surprises.

I suppose every old-house home owner has stories to tell about what they find in their walls– old bones, newspapers, wayward toys, etc. We’ve seen all that. I was surprised to discover very old Art Deco wallpaper (hand painted!!) behind the chimney, though.

We also discovered some less encouraging things. Someone years before had “capped” the exhaust to an old stove pipe with plaster, inserted a few old broken brick bits, and plastered over that. Over time, the plaster capping the exhaust vent cracked, allowing carbon monoxide from the furnace and water tank to seep into the room. *sigh*

We’ve also found a rainbow of weirdo colors, a kind of historic home diary left behind by previous homeowners.

Be prepared for other strange things, too. I found studs filled with soft bricks on all exterior walls. No contractor or carpenter I spoke with knew what it was. They attributed it to “old timers” and their odd building practices… but I later found out that this brick is called “noggin.” It may have been used as a insulator (unlikely, in my opinion), but most probably as a fire stop, since my home is a balloon frame home.

I hope these tips have helped you some. Good luck on your project!

WHAT IS IT with all this crazy weather?? Will someone please tell me?! Flooding here, flooding in the Mississippi?? Vicious tornadoes and I saw that they even had snow in Colorado?? In late MAY, for pete’s sake.

My area is still cleaning up from late April’s flash flooding. Everything is just so messy. Like everyone else, we’re chipping away at the messes, but we really don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to cleanup.

I recently heard about a very nice junk removal business– Getridofit.com – Affordable Junk Removal and Hauling. These guys look amazing! They solve the problem of junk removal, which, as you might suspect, can be very painful on the budget as well as on the emotions. Many people think their only recourse for removing junk is to hire a (very very) expensive professional hauler. We paid THROUGH THE NOSE last year for dumpster service. Ouch.

Well, the guys at GetRidofIt.com give you the ability to find more affordable junk removal teams in your area. GetRidofIt.com has a list of companies with excellent ratings based on price and customer service. It’s pretty easy to find junk removers in your area– just visit the GetRidofIt.com website and type in your zip code. And if you are an ambitious entrepreneur looking to start up a junk removal business (and it’s looking like a pretty lucrative career, these days!) you can sign up your company to get on the GetRidofIt.com’s list! Check out more information on the website. This is a good website to bookmark, too. Because even if you don’t have a natural disaster or renovation going on, you’re going to always need a helping hand to get rid of the old furniture, barbeque, busted bicycles, broken lawn furniture……

No amazing photos of progress these days… things are pretty humdrum right now. We’re still working on the wiring for the kitchen– it is ALMOST done! We are sooooo close to being able to close up the walls. I have to finish a few things up (thanks, all you wonderful guys and the very special young lady from my church, for all your very hard work!) yet. The electrical inspector will hopefully be here next week. After that, I can install the insulation, get the insulation inspected, and start putting up the WALLS! Yes, baby!

I’ve been preoccupied with other things this week, however, to have had much progress the last two weeks. I took a business trip to New York this week; I’ve had multitudes of assignments and deadlines for articles, and etc. So as you can expect, we are extremely eager to get this project FINISHED. I only have six more weeks scheduled for it.

Yes, believe it or not, I DO know where every single one of these wires belongs...

It’s been very difficult on the kids and husband. And I am surprised how difficult it has been on me, too. I am the one who started all this… I fully expected it to disrupt our lives… but the kids are finding it hard. Oh it was OK the first few weeks.. but we’ve been without a working kitchen/laundry room/dining room for almost two months now, with one more to go… it’s tough. We had to pack up a lot of their stuff (movies, DVD player, Playstation console, books, and most of the toys and things from their bedrooms) so that we could protect it all from the demolition dust and so that we could have space to wire their rooms with electricity, finally. It was like getting furniture moving equipment and packing everything away for a move: everything is in boxes EVERYWHERE. Inaccessible. It’s stressful when we need to dig something out (like my income paperwork because the IRS chose NOW to audit my income two years ago!). I really, really thought we were prepared for this renovation… but honestly, it’s SO big and SO disruptive that all my preparations are futile. Face it. We must endure these 3-4 months and live in chaos for a while. It WILL be worth it, it will! But it’s really, really tough for them right now, which makes it tough for me. Most teens are too busy worrying about their acne and hair and pronexin… my kids are struggling with no electricity, and having plaster dust in their pores! I feel so bad. I want things to go smoothly, but it so out of my control. *sigh*

So as much as I am loving this time because my dream is FINALLY coming true after 12 years… it’s not a pipe dream. But I will be so happy to have the entire house electrified, to have clean central heating, to have the downstairs insulated… there’s still so much to do for the next few years (you should see the upstairs and the 100-year old windows, OY VEY!) but that will come. For now, we must grit our teeth and GET THROUGH this kitchen renovation!

It’s probably difficult for you to “see” exactly how the walls and floor plan of the house look. Pictures can only do so much, it seems. I’m trying to take “before” and “after” photos to help you visualize the radical changes we are implementing here. Here’s one:

This is a view of part of the kitchen before we removed all the cabinets. Note the laundry room wall to the right of The Hubs. I have hated that room ever since we bought the house. It’s a long, narrow little hallway with a washer crammed in one on side, and a dryer crammed in on the other, and two doors in between them. Very awkward.

My daughter is standing where the laundry room door once stood. It was quite an adventure to get that wall down. You can read a fanciful rendition about it at Chuckella Norris Strikes Again. Actually, the entire demolition scenario was like effective hair growth shampoo– hair-raising and hair-pulling all at the same time. :S Ah, but now it is over. I’m praying for smooth sailing.

Opening up this area makes a world of difference. And we also removed a small partition on the other end of the kitchen, leading to the dining room. The original entry into the dining room was a very narrow, cobbed-up doorway. It was knuckle-scraping to carry a laundry basket through the doorway, let alone have four kids clear the dining room table after dinner! So we removed the two studs there (they were not load-bearing) and opened up the space. WOW what a difference. The kitchen is really huge (12 x 23).

Yuk.

We removed the wall where the refrigerator stood in the previous photo.

We intend on installing a half wall where the refrigerator once stood. I’ll have plants there and a base cabinet or two, for the purpose of serving dinnerware for the dining room. I think the flow of the kitchen will greatly improve.

Our rebuilding process begins this week!!

Today is our Sabbath rest day from work. We chugged along for nine days, packing up the kitchen and dining room, setting up a temporary kitchen in the garage, and demolishing the kitchen and dining room. What a wild ride! It’s like life just STOPPED during that time. I even forgot to water my baby tomato seedlings, and they died. I guess I’ll have to buy plants from the home center this year.

Anyway, we are thrilled that the demolition is DONE! We are now entering the planning stage, now that the walls are open and we can see exactly what’s going on within the structure.

The gutted kitchen, as viewed from the dining room.

The very good news is that few partition walls in this house are load-bearing. It’s rather odd. The house seems post-and-beam with balloon frame walls. In case you are wondering what balloon frame is, I wrote a post about it: Up, Up and Away. It’s called balloon frame for two reasons: one, the studs along the exterior of the home start at the sill plate (the top of the stone foundation) and go allllll the way up up up to the roof rafters; two, the hot air balloon was just coming into vogue at the same time as this unusual style of framing. The history of the balloon frame design is interesting. It is, however, an inefficient method for home building today, because it requires vast lengths of solid beams, which is not economically attainable. The balloon frame house also has two things against it: the second storey relies on the strength of nails to hold it up on ledger boards; and the long voids created inside the walls from the basement sill to the attic rafters is a fire hazard– there is nothing to stop a fire from racing up the walls to the attic.

Old style "cut nails." These were some of the first machine-made nails in this area.

This is a machine-made "cut nail"; these nails were manufactured in the U.S. from 1820 to 1910. Nails were previously hand-forged.

My home has some slight variations of the balloon frame that make it a little stiffer and safer. For one, instead of relying solely on nailing the second storey floor system to ledgers, the builder created beams with notches to set the floor joists. That was swell of him. Secondly, inside the first floor walls, the builder installed brick noggin. I assume this was for the purpose of making fire stops. It also helps to keep the house very cool in the summer. However, it’s also cool in the winter. :S And the noggin interferes with the placement of plumbing, electrical, and insulation (all these were implemented into housing decades after my house was built). If you are interested in reading about the history of Mr. Rogers– the guy who built my home– you can read about it here: Our History. I often wonder what Mr. Rogers would think if he knew his house was still standing.

The studs are still very straight and stiff. I’m impressed that, after 155 years, the studs are so straight. I recently (this week) discovered two support joists that have serious cracks, however. We have to fix these immediately. And the house does sag in the center– it has ever since we bought it. I think the sag is due to the inept “improvements” of previous owners, who hacked into the support structure and had no idea what they were doing. Before I can replace the walls, I need to meticulously inspect them and add support where necessary. After this, we can add electric, plumbing, etc. I’ll have loads more on this to come.

These studs are incredibly straight after 155 years.

P.S. In case you are wondering just how much stuff we removed from these two gutted rooms: the weight came to over 3.5 TONS!

Our dumpster is absolutely overflowing. Overflowing is actually an understatement, lol. BUT THE DEMOLITION is DONE!!! How I have waited for this day! It took us six full days, working 6-8 hours every day. I am SO sore, lol! But I am thankful it’s done.

After we demolished the kitchen, we progressed into the Dining Room.

This room was more difficult because there are so many corners, so many windows and doorways. There are TEN openings in this room– four windows and SIX doorways. And that does not count the basement and garage entry doorway (I’m not gutting that section until next year). We broke no windows, although I did break a window sill. I have to repair that this week.

And to Lin, who left a comment that she misses the multi-colors of the old kitchen (I hope you were being sarcastic there!! LOL), well, the dining room was JUST as colorful.

The old dining room ceiling was a salmon pink. I don’t know when it was painted this color… I assume sometime before the 1980s, because the previous owners installed a drop ceiling sometime around then.

Wow. That’s quite… pink.

(The red walls are mine.)

The old color for the dining room walls were once a mustard yellow. Could it possibly have been salmon pink and mustard yellow in this room?!?!? Whoa.

As for Livvy, she is growing very, very impatient with us. She is sick and tired of being cooped upstairs, away from all the action. We are trying to get the place cleaned up before she is allowed downstairs. She insists that we hurry up, or she is coming down one way or another without our help.

She's trying to squeeze through an old heater vent opening! Egads! It's a 10 foot drop. We covered the hole.

And this is a snapshot of our temporary kitchen, in the attached garage. It’s very cramped, but I think my daughter has made it rather cozy.

So onward we go…. I’m so glad demolition is over. It’s horrible, nasty exhausting work. We’ve never spent so many days doing it. Six days is long enough. I think we are all very relieved the worst is over.

We didn’t find any buried treasure. But Hubs found two pennies dated 1946 and 1956, which is about when the heating system was installed (and installed poorly, I might add).

So this week, we clean out the residual plaster dust and cobwebs, throw junk in a second dumpster, and start the rebuilding process. Oh, and I also have to earn some more money to pay for all this stuff… so far, I have managed to pay cash for everything as I go along. I’m praying we do not incur debt for this project. I have no idea how I’m going to get my cabinets and countertops and flooring, but all in good (and God’s) time.

Kitchen and Laundry Room are gutted! Glory to God! Yay!

This is what is was like two days ago:

We worked 6 hours today with one break. I called it quits early. We are totally beat. Wow. Thank God for coffee, which is perking right now.

And to the brilliant dudes who invented sheetrock? ILOVEYOUILOVEYOUILOVEYOUILOVEYOUILOVEYOU. People, there IS a reason why plaster and lathe is not installed any more. Rest assured, it is a very, very good reason.

I’m also very hapy to report that we now have running water once again, thanks to the brilliant Hubs. AND we have a washing machine hooked up in the basement! Hurray! Hubs is actually very good at plumbing, because he is such a neatnik and loves detailed work. He shoulda been a cabinet maker or a watch maker. He’s good.

We took SHOWERS and are relaxing this evening. We still have the dining room to and downstairs bathroom to gut… and we have two days in which to do it. The race is on…

Good news for me this morning!

In the kitchen, there exists a small wall, about 6 feet long, that severed the kitchen from a cramped laundry area and back entry door. I’ve hated it all the 10+ years we’ve lived here. Because it runs perpendicular to the floor joists, I’ve wondered if it was a load bearing wall or some kind of structural support. Which would mean that I would have to leave the blasted wall in place.

We removed the ceiling so I could get a really good look at the structure of this wall. And I am THRILLED to report that it is not a load bearing wall! You have no idea how ecstatic I am! Woooooo!!!!

I am 100% sure that it is not supporting anything, but I had a guy come look at it anyway; and he seconded the motion.

And so this is where we are in the kitchen today:

All that is left to do in this room is to remove this lathe.

The Hubs is working on the water supply problem (it will be *fun* flushing the toilets today, I tell you what). And we are planning on finishing the demolition of the kitchen and laundry alcove TODAY. We might even begin the demolition in the dining room, if we are not too exhausted. The dumpster is due back Monday morning, so we need to keep up the pace until then.

And here’s a photo of the damaged joist that I mentioned yesterday. The knuckleheads hacked a floor joist in half to install a shoddy plumbing job. People, NEVER allow a plumber to do this. Never.

The upper floor support is severely damaged due to this crap job.

We are officially halfway through the demolition. wow. I’m beat.

We have a total of 2,200 square feet of plaster and lathe to remove, and we’ve removed 1,248 of it so far. Only 952 square feet more to go!

Today we did a big blitz and forced ourselves to get the entire ceiling of the kitchen and laundry alcove, all 12 x 23 feet of it. I didn’t find any big surprises like I did when we gutted the living room. When I saw the shoddy knob-and-tube wiring installed in between the second story floor joists, I barely shrugged. When I saw the corroded copper plumbing with lead solder, I rolled my eyes in expectation. When I saw that the previous owners had hacked a supporting floor joist into huge holes and pieces to make room for a plumbing pipe, I did gape a little. And the dozen or so mouse nests wedged in between the lathe… very, very gross, but no surprises. It’s amazing how desensitized one becomes when gutting an old home!

I did find a rat skeleton, though. That make me very, um, queasy. As far as I know, we do NOT have rats here. Nor do I want ANY. The skeleton was a bit of a shock. I couldn’t tell how old it was… but it had some…. *stuff* hanging on there… kinda like King Tut unwrapped…. pretty dry but still…. enough to make you retch. Anyway, I was going to snap a photo for you guys (see how I want to involve you?!); I placed the remains outside for later, but it started to rain. And when King Tut is left out in the rain, his dry stuff gets moistened… and, well, you know. It reeked. Into the dumpster Mr. Tut went. You’ll have to use your imagination, now. Bummer, I know.

ANYWAY. I don’t have any photos for you today. I was too durn beat. Plus, we now have the added problem of no water in the house. In order to get my washing machine running, we have to shut off the ENTIRE WATER SUPPLY to divert the piping. I cannot believe the jokers who installed the stuff in this house. It’s unbelievable. How they got away with SO much slop, is beyond me. So we have no water supply because the Hubs couldn’t finish the piping job before he had to go to work. We have some bottled water for emergencies, but we had to take sponge baths out in the rain. And I still have no washing machine. And no working toilets. Nice.

UGH UGH UGH.

Well, my daughter is cooking dinner tonight (and we don’t have to worry about doing the dishes in a big tub tonight *maniacal laughter*) and I am here with my feet up. I have this ache in the back of my shoulders, from pulling plaster and lathe down from the ceiling for 6 hours straight. lol. I am taking the NIGHT OFF! And it feels goooooood.

My new kitchen sink and my new dishwasher are in the mail now. They will be here in a week or so. And I also ordered my PEX plumbing supplies today. I can’t wait until it’s installed. You know, we don’t see what it takes to install the plumbing and electric and insulation, so we don’t really realize how wonderful it is until it’s gone or not working properly. I REALLY miss my electric and I REALLY miss my plumbing.

Only 952 more to go…. only….

I can barely muster the energy to write this post, I am so exhausted! LOL. But I figured you all might be curious as to how Day 1 went in the Kitchen Renovation Of All Time.

It went well. We got a lot done, and we are officially exhausted.

After setting up our Temp Kitchen (temporary kitchen) in the garage, we dismantled most of the existing cabinets and countertops. After removing just one cabinet and the stove and fridge, our spirits soared. Already it’s an improvement.

We’re leaving the sink and sink cabinet in as long as possible right now. I spent the morning testing the electrical circuits, shutting them down, removing light fixtures and outlets, etc. This one threw me for a loop.

That, my dear friends, is typical of the wiring in this house. ITS CRAZY. This double-box had FOUR wired connections, with SEVEN wires crammed in the box. One, as you can see, was cut and left without a wire nut. Bit the other wire to the set was rigged up to one of the switches. The whole electrical system makes me foam at the mouth. It’s insane!!!

We worked on removing some plaster and lathe from the far end of the kitchen. This will become a laundry alcove.

While digging out the plaster, we discovered some of the very old, probably original wallpaper. I suspect this area used to be the housekeeper’s area.

And here’s the progress on Dumpster, Day 1. This thing will be overflowing when we are done!

Dumpster, Day 1

Whew! I’m off to check some kids’ homework, then I’m going to bed. Because we have to get up and do this again tomorrow!!!!!!!!! :S

Thank you for your prayers!