And I don’t want to.
I just spent the last two days ripping out all the sheetrock and nasty, spent insulation from my office. What a mess. It was a disastastrophe. I did all the work myself on Day 1 and Mr. NexStitch helped me on Day 2. I think we amassed about 45 bags of garbage – we had no easy way of doing it without bags – and about 8 or 9 bruises on my legs.
I’d been waiting eagerly to kick the wall behind my desk down because there’s a rather large eave that I haven’t had access to since we moved in (we’re desperate for storage).
This is where my desk was. And this is the wall I put my leg through. Ouch.
Really large-sized eave I can't wait to take advantage of.
But perhaps I should’ve kicked it in with better sneakers, socks, and jeans on. I had none of the above on and wound up with several cuts and bruises on one leg.
This is from the same leg....
...as this leg. And that's just one leg!
The other leg has its own collection of scars that I can’t attest to. I think next time, I’ll follow Shannon Mullett-Bowlsby’s advice and just set off some small explosive charges and be done with the whole thing rather quickly.
I’m kidding. (Sorta.)
The work was grueling. It was as hot as Haiti in there. Wearing a face mask made matters much worse. But I trudged through it.
This is where my desk was.
I had decided at 8pm on Day 1 that even if I had worked until 10pm – which I was prepared to – I still wouldn’t finish, so I quit work. The ensuing shower was euphoric.
I'm imagining the comfy chair, 2 bookshelves, table w/lamp and plasma tv I'll have in this corner.
I woke up on Day 2 in such horrible pain. I couldn’t move in any direction without hurting. But I had to get up and forge ahead.
I'm still unsure how I'll use this corner of the room.
I managed to coax Mr. NexStitch into helping me finish – he was busy prepping for a client on Day 1 – and thankfully he helped because there was nearly a full day’s work remaining.
This is where the new built-in bookshelf is going to be. Turns out the old one was mostly made from sheetrock. Yick.
FINDS
There were some interesting finds along the way including the scattered remains of a bird’s nesting material lodged in the slope of the roof, presumably coming from the soffit in the front of the house. I don’t have a picture of it because I pulled it out from in between the studs and it was a messy pile of pine needles, twigs, and other material that do not belong to any trees near our home.
During the tear-down for our bedroom, we discovered a problem: beehives.
Beehives. A bunch in fact. Found these on the apex of the roof in the crawl space.
They’d made their way into the crawlspace at the apex of the roof through some side vents, making several nests wherever they could. We found more on this side of the house. I can’t tell you how many times a bee would mysteriously make its way into my office. I still don’t know how they got from the crawlspace above my office into the room, but I’m glad we chose to rip it all down, because we wouldn’t have been able to address the problem correctly had we not done so.
And lastly was this lil’ gem.
I have to wonder if the owner of the skirt volunteered this Hot Number to be thrust into the ductwork willingly.
For the longest time, I’ve been complaining how hot it is in my office in the summer (and cold in the winter). After trial and error, we managed to get the living conditions to be better in there. But now I think we’ve discovered the root of the problem: a skirt. Yep, a skirt. I found a skirt – of all things – shoved into an open end of the ductwork leading into my office.
The skirt came from the left side of the duct. It's uncapped.
Hopefully now I’ll be able to get adequate heat and air in there!
And look who climbed onto the roof to help out with the demo:
Do you think she will work for food?
Wow, that looks like quite the project. I have projects I want to do in our house that are just a fraction of that and I’m afraid to kick in the drywall. You may have inspired me
KICK IT IN! What’s the worst thing that could happen? You have to replace it with something nicer? My step-father was a contractor. I grew up seeing this stuff happen all the time. I spent a Christmas without a kitchen. It’s nothing new to me. Don’t be scared. Pick up a hammer and bang it in. Then when you’ve made a hole big enough to reach your hands into, pull on the sheetrock. It should come down in pieces of varying sizes. Sometimes a HUGE piece comes off and other times it’s slow going. You can do it!
What a big project it’s turned out to be! Fun following your progress vicariously through the blog.
Thanks!
[...] several days, I managed to get the room ripped out right down to the stud, which revealed a few interesting finds. Since then, the room has been insulated. It only took 2 days. That’s dripping with sarcasm [...]