Pardon our dust while we...demolish!

We've been working on gutting the finished attic in the house. I cannot believe how much material is in that small space! Piles of plaster, lathe, drywall, trim, and cellulose insulation - to name a few.

For a couple days Jeremy and I went at it together with hammer and crow bar. I think we went from this...



to this...



...in about an hour!





It's kind of fun whacking and pounding and tearing the plaster off a wall, but it's hard work of course.

Then on Wednesday Jeremy got the news that we needed to do more work in the north side to get the basement drier. So Jeremy told me the rest of the demo was up to me and he was going outside!

Outside, on the north side, from front to back of house, from side of house to fence, was a thicket of blackberries, raspberries, and other random plants and the soil is sloped toward our basement. Plus, the window wells were full of bricks and dirt and leaves so basically when it rains - water pours in through the windows.



We spent a lot of time in the previous weeks digging out the berries and moving them to other spots in the yard.



Starting Wednesday night, Jeremy went to town. With the help of our next-door neighbor, he cut down the chain link fence between us and our neighbor moved the rest of the berries to his garden area.

Then Jeremy had to dig out the fence posts which were dug deep and set in concrete - I'm sure they would have withstood a tornado or atomic bomb.



Then Jeremy popped in some lovely new metal window wells.



Next he'll get started on the French drain. But enough about Jeremy.

Back to me.

We'd gotten all the plaster down on the east side, now I had to get down all the lathe and the blown-in insulation. Since a lot of this was over my head, I decided to don the bunny suit.



This photo is actually from when we were doing some mold work. I didn't wear the ventilator mask, but just a regular paper mask. I wore some big goggles though to keep stuff out of my eyes - not that it helped in the end.

So there I am in my full (and quite baggy) Tyvek suit, from little footies to a hood, a face mask, goggles, and gloves. Not an inch of skin is uncovered. And it's a bit toasty in the attic. Probably 70 or 80 I'd guess. Dust is swirling everywhere. My glasses and the safety goggles are fogging up and forming huge beads of condensation. The swirling dust sticks to everything. I can hardly see a thing. I'm sweating like crazy in my big baggy suit. I can feel sweat trickling down my arms into my thick, swampy rubber gloves.

But will I give this suit up? Heavens no! I'm working over my head prying lathe off the ceiling and raining down all over me is dirt, dust, bits of lathe, chunks of plaster, clouds of insulation, pieces of shingles, nails, drywall, pieces of wood, trash left over from the guy who put the last roof on, and other random things.

Jeremy joined me briefly last night to demo some on the east side. Here is what you look like if you don't wear a bunny suit:





So we got the east side mostly done: plaster, lathe, and insulation gone. Since this last photo I've got the closet space mostly cleaned out as well. We've been piling everything on the other side, so I hope our dumpster shows up soon so we can get rid of all this stuff!