And the Walls Came Down...

March was a very dusty, dirty month in our remodel. We spent the month tearing out the plaster in the house. The original plan was to start with the upstairs, then demolish the downstairs later on. The plan changed about halfway through when Josh started tearing out the downstairs bathroom. The month ended with all of the plaster in the house gone, except for one small section in the hallway.
Josh and a friend started on the upstairs the week before my Spring Break. Josh used a pry bar type of tool that quickly torn through the plaster and lathe. They would tear out one room at a time, then spend time sorting the lathe from the plaster. The lathe went out an upstairs window into the back of our old dump truck. The plaster had to be scooped into buckets and hauled to the upstairs porch. From there, Josh made a chute where the plaster could slide down to the trailer below. I think that Josh gave his friend, Lucas, quite a workout that week as bucket boy!
By the time Spring Break rolled around, he had the upstairs completely cleaned out. My job that week was to pull all of the nails that were left after the lathe was taken down and finish taking down any plaster that Josh missed. This was very tedious work, but it felt good when I could look at the upstairs and see that it was completely done.
While I worked upstairs, Josh spent the week removing all of the trim downstairs. That has definitely been his least favorite job so far. But he did really well; only one piece in the entire house was severely damaged, and we probably won't have to reuse that piece anyway. By the end of the week, he had the bathroom and two downstairs bedrooms torn down. I got the pleasure of helping scoop out those rooms!!
The week after Spring Break, the girls went to Grandma's, so Josh and I worked every night for several hours. This meant that we could tear out the mud room, hallway and kitchen. The mud room was somewhat difficult because of the height of the ceiling over the basement stairs. It made it harder to reach all of the nails that I had to pull, so Josh had to do some (standing on a ladder on steps over the basement was more than I could do). We had hoped that the kitchen cabinets would be salvageable, but they did not come off the walls very well so they went to the burn pile. The hallway was also difficult because of the stairway. Josh decided that, rather than dismantling the entire staircase, it would be easier to leave the small portion of plaster that butted up to it. So we have a small (4x4) section of plaster that will remain in the house. Josh plans on skim coating it to smooth it out. The dining room and living room were the last project. I still have to finish my nail pulling in there.
One other chore during this time was to move all of the trim out of the house and into our place in town. After Josh pulled the nails out of the trim, we loaded it up and hauled it in to be stored in the loft in our garage. This will make it more convenient for me this summer when I am refinishing it. We also brought in all of the doors (17 in all) and stored them in our basement.
This demolition process was hard work, but looking at the house now, it was definitely worth it. I can't wait to see where we head next!