Yu Have Come to the Right Place.

TOH - Kitchen Project #3, Demolition Completed

I'm on a roll. The next day, my project manager came at noon after he finished his violin lessons. I should clarify - his parents dropped him off after lessons. We proceeded to completely remove all of the lathe, miscellaneous boards and other junk.

Almost done! We're a little better prepared now with masks and eye protection. You can see the holes along the top where I had insulation pumped into the ceiling. Only at the west side did the wainscot ceiling not exist. There, all of the insulation fell out and made a huge mess. At this point, I hadn't even taken the clock off the wall, the utensils off the counter, or dishes off of the drying rack. ha! Shhh - don't tell Wami.The garbage mounts. I had to run around borrowing garbage bins from neighbors just to throw everything away. I filled up almost four plastic bins. Luckily, Tyler's taking care of the garbage on the right. He's getting paid for that, so I left it. Finally, time to go shopping. We end up buying recessed light fixtures for shallow installation, a new electrical box, 12-gauge electrical wiring, insulation, six sheets of drywall, and a box of mud. Imagine me and a 14 year-old kid loading sheet rock in a small SUV. They're bundled in two, and added up to 75+75=150 lbs each. My car's small, so one of us had to hold everything up while the other rearranged, padded here and there, etc. Fun times. About 4 employees walked by and peeked, but made sure not to make eye contact. Not until our last piece was in did one younger employee ask us if we needed help. Thanks Lowe's. For nothing.
It turned out that the studs used in 1923 apparently are not standard 2x6s. More like 2x5s or 4s. The recessed lighting would not fit. Bummer! But at the same time, I don't think we would have had time to do the wiring, cut additional holes, etc. anyway.

By late afternoon, Eric and I found ourselves putting up our first sheet of drywall. One 4"x8" sheet = 70+ pounds. One 5'9" CEO (of my house), and one 5'4" project manager = not enough manpower. Amazingly, we got one sheet up. I had to hold one end plus most of the other end up against lofted, slanted studs, while Eric attempted to hold part of his end and simultaneously drill drywall screws with precision up into the studs. We did have one near disaster when the first set of screws popped out and I was holding up 70+ pounds by myself. Luckily I'm so incredibly buffed. I can say funny things here and there since I'm sure most of you don't even read the text. Ha! Anyway, that first sheet looked like doodoo. Tons of ugly holes. But we got it up. After that, we were pooped and went off to the ward picnic. We showed up an hour late, and then afterward came straight back home to try to get more sheets up. This time, I recruited some other people from the ward picnic - Troy and Drew: YM's counselors 1 and 2. That's just a coincidence though. Really, they're just good friends. Nothing to do with their church callings. By the end of this thing, I will have had many good friends come over to save my butt. With Troy, Drew, and Eric's help, by 1 am we had succeeded in redoing the first sheet and putting up 2 more sheets (and destroying some of the existing side walls while we were at it). It's funny to note that that wives and 1 kid entertained themselves playing Guitar Hero III on the Wii in the other room while we worked. It provided music for us too.

It was tremendous progress for one day and, needless to say, I was spent. At that point, I was also sick of my house and didn't want to ever look at the kitchen again.Note the big ugly seam between the two sheets. Ugh. This would turn out to be no fun to fix. You can also see the big chunk missing on the far wall. Much more of it would eventually fall off. When Eric and Troy suggested the "right way" to fix it, I said forget it. I'm not ripping off all my walls, lathe and plaster, and going through the process over again.This is all the missing drywall that's left. Not too bad. Even the mess is not too bad at this point. Too bad the dust in the rest of the house was already spread.

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