Craft Room Phase I!

MacGyver and I were sitting around this weekend trying to decide what to do. Suddenly he said, lets go knock out that wall in the craft room. As soon as I realized he wasn't kidding, up we went! We moved some of the stuff around but weren't able to get it all out of the room. Now, for any of you who has never had to remove lath and plaster walls before, I do not recommend it (unless of course you're into that sort of masochistic thing in which case knock yourself out). There simply is not easy way to do it. It's messy. Very, very messy. I've decided that removing it ranks right behind cutting up raw chickens, de-veining shrimps, and hauling baskets of laundry up and down the stairs in my top ten least favorite activities!

Remember my Skittles Colored craft Room!? Well here is a picture of the wall from that side before anything was torn apart.



Say goodbye to this wall!



A light switch used to be where this hole now is. Notice the friendly sign to Robyn where not to hit-we both tried to remember whether we knew CPR.



I got to help!! MacGyver said I did a good job but I am s-l-o-w so he let me whack at it for awhile and then told me to beat it. I think it is appropriate to take a moment to explain what exactly it is that we are doing. You see, we live in a hamster cage. Our house is built of cedar, metal and plaster. I like to equate the plaster to that frosting/glue Mom used to make for gingerbread houses - the hard-as-a-rock-break-your-teeth icing? It doesn't come off easily. It's extremely messy. And a giant pain in the patooty! But I digress...So MacGyver told me to scram and let the "real men" work. Notice the difference in fervor between my picture and his!! In the amount of time it took me to take down this small section he had half the rest of the wall already down. Sigh... I guess this is why we leave this stuff to the pros!




Here's what the wall looked like after all the plaster was removed! I can't imagine building houses like this! It must have taken forever to build!

Did I mention it is a messy job? Chunks of plaster all mixed in with pieces of lath (which of course are full of sharp, tetanus-laden nails). I'll let you enjoy the next few play-by-play without commentary :)





So now that all that business was over (and a GIHUGIC mess had been made) we needed to remove the framing posts.



Oh! Look who has the sawzall!! Yes, that's me (admittedly I had to be coerced to use the stupid thing, but I'm all better now!)! Now that the wall is out the chimney must come out as well.


MacGyver started chipping away at the plaster covering the chimney. This chimney had long since been out of commission. It runs down through the house, through the kitchen and into the basement. We think it was once used to cook with or to heat the house from the basement.



We started knocking bricks off one by one and chucking them down the chimney into the basement (which was pretty entertaining actually!).







MacGyver went down in the basement and stuck his head into the chimney ;)



Our basement looked prett scary after we were all done with that! These are all the bricks from the chimney and the plaster from the wall spilling out of the chimney. I'm not looking forward to the day when all of that has to come out of the basement!

And finally, after a long weekend of hard work, it's all done!!