Demolition Time Part 1

Hello dear friends, these are very busy times here at our farm!

  The demolition of the interior of the house is mostly complete and we have had to make some decisions in response to the unexpected (or should I say expected?) issues that are being uncovered as the interior of the house is being gutted.  I will share more information about those discussions in my next blog!

For now I would like to share some of the work that has happened to get the house ready for framing.

Here is a photo of our living room with the demolition started.  Most of the walls in our house were lathe and plaster.  The lathe is the strips of wood which were then covered in plaster.  The lathe was attached to nailing strips which were anchored into the stone of the house.  At the time that our house was built this would have been very typical construction.  The space between the lathe and stone wall was not insulated.  Since the stone wall is about 20 inches thick it would take the house some time to get cold in the winter but once it got cold it stayed cold!  Likewise, it takes a while for the stones to heat in the summer but once they do...the house stays hot!  Once our renovations are complete our house will be insulated which will moderate the temperatures year round.   And after years of resisting we are now inclined to have central air conditioning installed as part of the other work that will be done on the heating system.

While the demolition was taking place we typically had 4 or 5 workers here every day.  Removing the lathe and plaster is a very manual and messy process.  Some workers hammered away breaking the plaster to pieces and other workers swept up the debris and tossed it into a dumpster.  

We are not going to lie.  It was a big mess.  The contractor installed a temporary zippered doorway upstairs between the addition and the old house to minimize the dust entering the bedrooms on the second floor.   There is a French door between the living room in the old house and the kitchen in the addition but even with the door closed the dust went everywhere.

We are currently on our fourth dumpster.  When we created our long driveway we added 25 cedars that will eventually form a hedge.  At the time we didnt consider access for large vehicles!  We had to dig out 5 cedars which are now in a holding bed to allow the truck delivering the bin to gain access to the work area.  The trees will hopefully survive and we will be able to replant them in the spring.

As the old lathe and plaster walls were removed the stonework was revealed.  Fortunately everything is in good condition and no issues of concern were identified.

Seeing our old house without any interior walls was fascinating.  When we built our addition part of the stone wall on the back of the house became an interior wall so we were able to incorporate it into the construction.  That is how we were able to create a stone wall in the dining room and kitchen and a partial stone wall in the master bedroom and guest bedroom.  For the purposes of this renovation however almost all of these stone walls are exterior walls so we will need to have insulation and interior walls framed and drywalled.

As the demolition progressed we were very excited to see what kind of "treasures" would be unearthed.  We were amused to see what the workers found. 

This tin of paste wax was found under the old kitchen.  The customer service team at SC Johnson was very helpful and advised us that this tin was part of a promotion that they had run in 1962!

A couple of workers thought that finding the marbles was hilarious.  They added to the collection as they found more between the floorboards.

A quick google search suggests that this colouring book could be from the early 1980s.

A miscellaneous collection of other treasures.

 

This is a collection of items that we found once our old kitchen cabinets were removed.  Perhaps we had mouse hoarders.  It is a little hard to explain how these items ended up under a built in cabinet...but they did.  We are wondering what they were going to do with the syringe.

Work has paused for a few days while we wait for the results of an engineering report on the old timbers that supported the first floor of the house.  Over the years it seems that some misguided work has compromised 7 of the timbers.   We are expecting a recommendation to remove the timbers and replace them with new joists.  Our contractor is preparing various options for us which we will review next week.  Hopefully this complication wont delay the completion of our renovations significantly.  

Thank you for visiting my blog and wishing everyone a great weekend!