Thursday, December 11, 2008

Step 5 - More Demolition


As I mentioned earlier, the kitchen wall in this picture has a 9" bump in it, which would look strange once cabinets were hung here. The plan was to frame out the wall to the left of the bump so that it was all the same depth. The refrigerator was to go in the corner where the ladder is in this picture, but the refrigerator is too deep, and would stick out into the walkway. I decided to use my reciprocating saw to cut an alcove in the wall to accommodate the depth of the refrigerator.

It was then that I learned that the violent reciprocating action of the saw on a plaster and lath wall cracks all the plaster within a several foot radius of the cut. As a result, I ended up demoing the whole wall, since most of the plaster was destroyed by a small test cut anyway.


As you can see, the bump was due to the chimney. The builders also took advantage of the cavity created by the wall to conveniently run the sewer stack and hot and cold water lines to the second floor.

A messy, dusty job. I filled seven construction bags with plaster in the cleanup process. Plaster weighs a lot, you can only fill about 1/5 of a construction bag before it weighs over 60 lbs, and is no longer practical to carry. Plaster also has a propensity to go airborne. This demolition coated my living room in a fine layer of dust, in spite of the plastic drop cloth.

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