Well, that was unpleasant

Someday, in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future I will be cooking contentedly in my modest sized, yet spacious feeling kitchen.  I will look up at the soaring ceiling height and breath easy.  Perhaps we will have friends over who will remark the openness of our petite kitchen, Ryan and I will smile modestly and say it was nothing, a quick project we did one weekend.   Someday.

So far, THAT was the most unpleasant work we’ve done.  And I really have no right to complain AT ALL as the way I prefer to take down ceilings is from this vantage point.

Ceilings come down fast and are much more easy demo work in that regard.  But the DUST (and Lord knows what else) that has settled on a horizontal surface since 1860 (the front rooms) or 1940 (the kitchen) is unimaginable.  We sealed up the kitchen anticipating this.  We covered the two windows with care so we didn’t get junk caught behind the sills.  We forgot about – or didn’t realize – what a huge help the box fan venting out in the front rooms was.  Additionally, the kitchen ceiling had recessed lighting (yay, electricity!) and insulation to contend with.  Here’s a cutaway of what we were dealing with – plaster over lathe, insulation, drywall, and live wires.

Ryan did a fantastic job ripping down the ceiling.  I tapped out early when the dust got to me and busied myself organized the yet-again filled barn (kitchen cabinets, mudroom contents, latest Home Depot run supplies).  In two hours, “we” took down about 2/3 of the ceiling and cleaned up almost all of the debris (Frank made another run to the dump and returned an empty truck).   Here’s a few more shots of the ceiling above… it’s going to be great, but my goodness it will have been hard won.

We did have one casualty of the evening.  Ryan now has another thing in common with Curt Schilling (besides you know, having a near perfect game at Fenway Park) - the bloody sock.  We’ve had a couple near misses throughout demo with nails into shoes, but Ryan hit Yahtzee tonight.  L  Foot is now cleaned and elevated… don’t worry folks, I was a lifeguard in high school.  I’m all over it. 

This weekend we have the “E&T Show” as we like to call them (Cait’s brother Eric and sister-in-law Tatyana) coming in.  We won’t subject them to the kitchen work, but we’re excited for them to see the place and have some kitchen cabinets to touch up that have their name all over it.  Rumor has it that Rick and Denise, Ryan’s parents, might also swing by.  We love visitors!