November 24, 2006

What better way to work off the over-indulgences of Thanksgiving Dinner than to knock down walls the very next day. And so our kitchen project officially begins!

Over the years, we've removed plaster and lathing in exterior walls throughout the house in order to add insulation. The job doesn't get any cleaner with experience, we simply become smarter in dealing with it. Here in the kitchen we laid a tarp to protect the floor and catch debris. As it filled, we dragged it out the door and onto a pickup truck. Debris gets heavy! Plaster is a type of cement so it gets VERY heavy! We had to unload the tarp often.

Walls have hidden secrets!

In 20 years of remodeling, we've found apricot brandy bottles and a few old magazines. Other than that, there haven't been significant treasures.

But remodeling exposes secrets of other kinds; some pleasant surprises, others scary near-misses. As we removed plaster from around the chimney, we were pleased to see it's Watertown Brick, a locally made cream-colored brick.

Somewhat frightening though, were the charred bricks and burnt lathing around the cookstove's pipe opening into the chimney. The lining between the pipe and chimney had rusted, leaving a poor fit that allowed sparks to get into the wall. Wow, God keeps a watchful eye!

Wiring? That's another story. Looks like we may be redoing some of that in the future...

Levels and slopes

We suspect the sunporch at one time was an open, exterior porch. The floor level is lower than the rest of the house, with a slight pitch. The ceiling is also lower and pitched about 2" within nine feet. Knocking out the ceiling revealed an angled rafter built to provide the pitch.

When it comes to slopes elsewhere, we're pretty lucky. Our house was built well. Not only is it structurally sound, it's also accurate. Overall, we don't have the crooked walls, poorly-angled corners or other issues that often come with old houses.