Office Ceiling Demo, Part 1

Today, Liz and I were working upstairs in the office while Bob was in the basement. On the docket: demo the office ceiling.
Today, Liz and I were working upstairs in the office while Bob was in the basement. On the docket: demo the office ceiling.
Upstairs, I ended up covering some of the items in the office with tarp. This was a lazier solution, and didn’t involve me having to move anything out. Which was great, because I wasn’t really looking forward to walking all this stuff back downstairs.
While Liz was out on a big day full of errands, I worked a bit in the office – adding more insulation to the north wall.
Started to get back into more of a house night schedule, after a bit of time away. With the big push to get our basement floor epoxied, Liz and I expended a lot of energy… and have needed time to recharge.
Today, Liz and I went into the office to try to keep the cold at bay. Our original plan was to put insulation in the walls, but given how cold the room was… we decided to tackle specific areas where we felt leaks/drafts coming in (despite our best efforts).
We both have some vacation time coming up, towards the end of the month. And thanks to Liz’s planning, we have a good amount of work scheduled on the house. Here’s to a solid November, and to the start of what we hope will be a solid December.
Spent a lot of the day just cleaning up the office area. I worked a ton, but it feels like there’s little to show for it. First, I hauled about 14 bags of demo/debris down to the porch. Then, I shop vacced the walls for a few hours, trying to clear away any remaining plaster, lath, and dirty insulation. Looking over some of the older photos from earlier this week, I’m wondering “Did I even do anything today?”
I picked up where she left off, and mostly dealt with the demo that arched upwards at an angle. Given the position of it all, there was no good way to really do the demo without being directly underneath everything. And so I took a bath in debris and dirty insulation. No avoiding it. Just tons of crap coming down on my head. Totally gross.
After work today, Liz and I suited up to spend some time in the office – doing more demo. We had a lot of lath to remove, and a lot of ancillary plaster to get rid of. Surprisingly, we filled a lot of additional trash bags.
The Bagster process took about a solid two hours, getting everything moved from the porch (and upstairs) out to the driveway. After that, I switched gears and began working on clearing the joists in the office (along the north wall).
In the course of our demo, we discovered: another window! This room really has all sorts of hidden surprises.
The fireplace in the office had a really loose mantel. After moving it to one side, we discovered a treasure trove of lost/forgotten things that had slipped away from view. Some items were from 20 years ago, some were more than 50 years old.
It’s hard now to say that, given how tired I feel as I write this. But Liz always reminds me that we feel much more invigorated after a full, productive day of house work. As tiring as it is, the work does instill a great sense of accomplishment, after a good work day.
On Saturday, Liz and I resumed our Reboxing the Boxes project – going through a lot of the items currently stored in our front office room.
Today, Liz and I spent the morning and afternoon tackling the second floor. We’ve decided to refocus our efforts on the second floor, and the best thing we feel is to clear as much space as possible.