Solo Demo Run
On Wednesday evening, I found myself on my own in Hyde Park. Bob was working on finishing Julie’s Lighting Setup, and Liz was knitting with the girls.
Not being that skilled on my own, the one thing I knew I could do for sure? Demo work. I started in the guest bedroom and continued some of the work I started over the weekend.
First, I bagged up a lot of the smaller debris on the ground. Then, I worked on pulling up the linoleum from the second half of the room. Beyond prying up a thin metal bar that ran down the middle of the room, the linoleum came up quite easily.
There were maybe two layers under the linoleum itself, but all of this came up fairly easily. While a bit cumbersome given its width, all I ended up doing was mostly folding pieces down until they fit into the trash can (the linoleum was very brittle, and would basically crack/pop the moment I folded it down).
And down to the bare floor! All of this is coming up (eventually), but for now… it’s cleared out of the way. Next up: beating on the wall with a hammer.
And hey! I just realized – I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it on here before or not. But… why all the demo, you ask? Well, we’re planning on moving some walls (obviously). We’re opening up one room (which we’re using as an office), and shifting two walls about a foot and a half. The office will get a little bigger, and the two bedrooms (one guest, one master) will get a bit smaller.
Here’s where I ended up stopping for the night. All in all, it was remarkably easy (far easier than I thought it would be). I took a knife and scored the walls a bit near the corners, hoping to prevent any cracks from spreading beyond the wall I was working on.
Mostly, I banged away on the wall and tried to pull large pieces of plaster directly into the trash can. And the wood… well, it just kept piling up, and so I left it alone for now. There’s a small area on the bottom that I left, and I also avoided the electrical outlet (I’m still nervous around electricity, and trying to understand it a bit better).
This was maybe an hour, maybe a little less. I ended up filling three heavy duty bags with plaster in clearing this section out. I say “filled,” but really I mean filled to the point where I could mostly still move the bag. The plaster is heavy, and the bags are maybe 1/4 to 1/3 full.
More than anything else, the debris seems to be the bigger job here. The demo work was easy enough (and honestly, quite pleasant truth be told). Hauling all the aftermath downstairs is going to be the real pain.
Luckily, we found a service called Bagster that may let us clear out a lot of debris without having to actually get a full-sized dumpster.
I had a nice time, believe it or not – working solo, playing a bit of music on my phone, and just beating the crap out of the wall. I was a little sad to stop when I did, as I felt like I could have continued on for a few more hours. I’m kind of looking forward to a massively long weekend day where I can just let loose, and try to do as many walls as possible.
There’s no “in with the new” just yet. So for now… out with the old. Out with the old.
Related:
A Bit of Destruction, Inside and Out
A Long Conversation, and the Beginning of the Kitchen Demo
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