drills, wine and a crow bar

While deep cleaning our house was first on the to do list a very close second is painting. The oil furnace not only did a number on our woodwork but the walls as well leaving the once ivory walls looking dingy, dark, and well, ugly. But before we can get started painting we had to have some plaster repair done. With our plaster contractor scheduled to start Tuesday and Chris holed up in his office Monday evening writing closing arguments I invited my friend Stephanie over to see the new place and help me prep for plaster work. I promised wine and demolition so it promised to be a good time!

Unlike most houses that have drywall ours is all plaster. We had holes and some dinged up corners as you'd expect but we also had significant water damage in the kitchen from an old roof leek and damage around a few windows and in the bathroom. There were also some random holes and cut outs from who knows where.

 random holes in our bedroom wall

water damage in kitchen windowsill 

hole in the wall downstairs???

Our plaster contractor had instructed us to mark each place we wanted repaired with blue painters tape and to remove any screws, bolts and nails in the wall so those could be repaired. I'm embarrassed to say I had never used our drill before. I know.... I know....pathetic. Luckily the drill was a piece of cake, the painted over screws, nails and anchors not so much. But after a lot of drilling and yanking with the help of needle nose pliers we got everything out of the walls and were able to go through and tape areas for repair. All of that peeling plaster below is from that old roof leak...yikes!

Having drank some wine, used the drill and taped off areas throughout the house we were ready for the fun part...the demolition. In the lower floor guest bedroom there was an odd unfinished built in book shelf that I was dying to take out. Think of it as step 1 out of 57 to make this room an awesome guest retreat. Crow bars in hand we were super excited to have at it.

Turns out it wasn't very tightly attached so it was probably the worlds easiest demo project and we were slightly disappointed. A few crow bar swings later and we had a blank wall and a pile of lumber. And we were able to retreat to the porch upstairs to finish our wine.

Notice my very unwise shoe decision. P.S.A.: You should probably wear real shoes and gloves when demoing and probably other stuff too. I did wear real shoes last night when we tore out all of that lovely industrial grade carpet. More on that later.