Demo Day IV & V

We made a ton of progress this weekend and are finally on the home stretch of demolition. Michelle & Ryan joined in the fun and helped us out on Saturday. Thanks R&M!

We spent the whole day smashing plaster and hauling lath and plaster out to the dumpster. Michelle and I were the primary haulers while Ryan and Justin got busy with the sledgehammers. We finished clearing the ceilings upstairs as well as the entire stairwell. By the end of Saturday we had the whole upstairs stripped down to the studs and all of the debris picked up and put in the dumpster. It was filthy, strenuous work!

Michelle and I had filth all over our faces at the end of the day. When I got in the shower that evening, the water ran gray through 2 shampoos.

Over night, our first snowfall of the season came and we woke up to about 2-3 inches of snow, an infrequent occurence in Seattle. It made driving from our house in West Seattle to Beacon Hill a little dicey due to the fact that Seattle doesn't own plows or salt the roads. But, we made it over the two big hills and back again safely.



Justin and I spent most of Sunday doing little details that wouldn't generate a lot of waste. I clipped all of the K&T wiring out of the first and second floors and unscrewed all of the recepticles in the living and dining rooms while Justin sawed off and capped the plumbing. We still have a functioning toilet which is mostly all I care about plumbing-wise. Ultimately, we wrapped up those tasks and took to removing the 700 billion nails from the studs. Each piece of lath is tacked onto the studs with two nails on either end and often two nails at each stud it crosses. When you pull off the lath, you usually pull a few nails with it but generally, you leave a bunch of nails behind. So, we spent about 2 hours pulling nails and still have about 250 billion nails left to go.

Here's Justin freezing his tush off extracting nails from the studs.