Week 2

SATURDAY:

When facing a project, demo is the most exciting. It's fun to knock things down and start to see the space as it's going to be. But oh how soon we forget how much work the clean up is.

Chuck started the day by taking down two 4' x 8' brick walls with a sledgehammer. No easy feat, to say the least. His last few swings revealed a hole to the outside. Love it.



Then, onto the task we have been dreading. We took on our old nemesis, Plaster & Lath, and we got our asses kicked. Smashed fingers, cut legs, a bump on the noggin from a falling piece of plaster. And my arms feel like jelly. There is no easy way to go about it. Chuck started by trying to cut the wall out with a circular saw, but it was sparking from hitting concrete, and we were afraid something was going to catch fire. So we went back to the old fashioned way - a hammer, a crow bar and some good old-fashioned elbow grease. But first I had to vacu-seal the area because on top of the plaster was a layer of green lead paint. Then we chipped away the layer of drywall on top. We had to stay in the room until we were finished, then strip at the door and put our clothes into a trash bag. Good times.

The thing I ALWAYS forget to take into consideration when planning a schedule for our renovation projects is that regardless of how many hours there are in a day, there are only so many hours our bodies can handle of back breaking work. We finally knocked off in mid-lead-paint-clean up because we could physically do no more.

The good news is, this is the worst it's gonna be. From here on out, we're going to start re-building! Tomorrow is a wash because I had a last minute commercial shoot pop up that will put me out of commission all day. Chuck is going to use the time to catch up on some house stuff.

Oh, and no word from T all weekend. Go figure. We're already shopping for a replacement.