Mowing the lawn and pulling nails...

We have a new lawn mowing service.  It is not particularly cheap, we have to provide room and board, clothing, education, etc.  

As I write this, I realize it's not that good of a deal for us, but gosh, he is cute!  

Wythe mowing our lawn

child labor at its best

I mentioned in a previous post that we were pulling up the new hardwood floors to find the original floors.  They were actually in better condition than we expected.  We have several sections that need to be patched, some loose boards to fix but nothing that we can't fix.  The biggest issue right now is pulling out the billions of tiny finishing nails they used and scrape off the areas where they glued plywood to the floor. 

scraping off the glue and plywood 

These are the nails we are pulling out. Some are so tiny you can hardly see them, you have to run your foot or hand over the floor to find them.  The only way to get them out is to grip them with nippers and slowly roll the nippers to ease the nail out of the wood.  

These are the nails I pulled out of an area less than two square feet.  As you can imagine, it is time consuming.   It is also frustrating.  Why anyone would cover up such a beautiful old floor?   

My kids really have been troopers during this project.  Many times we spend the entire day in a construction zone and they are left to fend for themselves.  For the most part they do an excellent job of finding a way to entertain themselves. 

a pry bar makes a good bridge

'til next time...

We are plastered...or is it plastered out...or out of plaster...?

We are just about out of plaster to smash. 

And we aren't sad about that at all.

We have a little more in the bathroom upstairs but we haven't pulled the wall out yet to get to the plaster and lath. 

plaster and lath removal

I find our plaster clean up crew absolutely adorable.  Just to be clear...she doesn't always look this 'put together' while working on the house.  My kids wear whatever they want to the house.  Usually we all look like a bunch of squatters milling about the house.  In fact, we have noticed that after a day working on the house, the homeless no longer ask us for money.  When we are sitting at the stop light they are likely to ask us if we are ok..."rough day?  do you need a water or something...?" 
You know you have sunk to a new low when the homeless feel pity for you. 

The plaster clean up crew

I don't remember seeing this on the '5 year old chore list' but...

removing plaster from the chimney

I worked long and hard at removing the plaster from the chimney.  It is not easy work.  The bricks are so old and the mortar so crumbly that it is a slow process.  I found that using a pry bar (my favorite tool EVER) and a hammer worked the best for me. Using the tip of the pry bar I would angle it is toward the brick, tap with the hammer until the plaster starts cracking, work the end of the bar under the plaster and keep hammering until you get a chunk of plaster to break loose. You quickly get the feel of it and can feel the difference between the layers of plaster and the edge of the brick.  You want to scrape along the brick to get the plaster off but being careful not to chip the brick.  It isn't easy work on the hands, especially not for those of us who have arthritis in our hands!  I would work on the chimney for an hour or so, or until I couldn't grip the hammer and pry bar any more, then I would have to let my hands recover for a bit. 

I was a little sad about the shape of the chimney, way more cracks than I was hoping for but we are still hoping we can get it fixed and working. 

living room chimney

Meanwhile, we continued removing and hauling plaster. If you look on the internet you can find the "best" way to do the job. Actually, you can find several different "best" ways to remove plaster.  I'm sure the best way depends on the house you are working in, number of people involved, time frame, etc.   We found that the best way for us was to smash and break loose the plaster from the lath. Then stop and shovel all of the plaster into five gallon buckets and haul it outside to our plaster pile.  Then we would pry the lath off of the studs, stack and carry it outside to our lath pile.  Once the lath is off you have to do another plaster cleanup to get all the pieces and 'fingers' of plaster that are behind the lath. 

hauling plaster, 10 gallons at a time

pouring plaster into the pile

conquering Mt. Plaster

The kids, the plaster pile and stacks of lath in the background

'til next time...

We have a new game...it's called House Jenga

In the evenings we gather together as a family and play a new game.  

It's called House Jenga.  

The rules are similar to plain ol' Jenga, the main difference being if you remove the wrong piece your house falls down on your head.  

It is exciting though, and there is nothing like the fear of imminent death to foster family bonding. 

'til next time....
                               (if there is a next time...)

If you think the dust bunnies at your house are bad....

I think I can confidently say my steps will never be this dirty again!

I think. 

I hope. 

This mess was from the insulation that fell down out of the ceiling.  It is nasty, filthy stuff to work with. It coats you with layers of grey dust, sometimes it takes a couple showers to scrub all the layers off. 

staircase full of insulation

We are peeling back the layers of flooring on the first floor.  They had prefinished hardwood installed in two of the rooms.  We are pulling up that floor and the plywood underneath to see if we can locate the original hardwoods.  Ainsley was quite handy in pulling up the floor.  She would pull and pull with all of her might.  When a piece was particularly difficult we could hear her chanting to herself, "focus Ainsley, just focus!"  

She's also quite handy at smashing plaster. 

So, after putting the temporary kitchen back together for the umpteenth time we decided we have to have all of the plaster off of those walls at this point.  I think we were just avoiding this room but the "plaster" is really just concrete.  At least taking it off of the walls wasn't as hard as taking it off of the ceiling.  The strange thing is that when we opened up the wall that faces the front door the house instantly shrunk in size.  That answered my question about opening up more walls!

plaster removal in kitchen

walls open now

'til next time...