My father-in-law will be doing a lot of the work on this house and he had already started, as the settlement was in November. He disconnected the electricity and then began pulling down the chopped straw ceiling in the loungeroom and the plasterboard ceiling in the front bedroom. Aside from their hideous look, the lowered ceilings made the already small rooms feel even more cramped. He also took down the original ceilings above those, so currently there are only rafters in the old section of the house. In doing so, he discovered quite a few bird nests:
As you can see, there was also an old fireplace hidden behind the truncated wall in the front bedroom. We suspected there was, though the external chimney had been removed and the roof section replaced.
Now both ceilings in the front two rooms had been taken down, the first job on the agenda for the day was to taken down the four ceilings in the other two rooms (each room had two ceilings). A start had been made on the lower ceiling in the second bedroom:
Before we could attack the ceilings in the third bedroom, the two sets of drawers had to be carried outside, where an hour with a drill and hammer saw them broken down for the scrap wood pile.
With the drawers gone, we started taking out the lower ceiling, revealing a wall with three different colour treatments:
The lower ceiling was pulled down from below but to stay out of the way of 80 years of accumulated dirt, the higher ceiling was pushed down from above. We were down to the rafters in three rooms now, with only one left.
The second bedroom was slightly more complicated by the extra structure and two large bales of wall insulation (why do you buy wall insulation and chuck it up in the ceiling space???). My husband and father-in-law decided they needed some supplies from the local hardware store, so they headed out, leaving me to tackle a panelled wall. The panelling needed to come off, as the wall did not extend the full 10 feet we needed to be able to raise the ceilings to their original height. To my surprise, my pry bar went right through it at the first swing and the panelling turned out to be simply indented sheets of thin veneer that came off quite quickly:
The framing proved to be random pieces of timber nailed together so it ended up coming out as well:
All that was left was the original ceiling, which also got pushed down from above, leaving only rafters and the man hole cover. By now, we had made a nasty mess of the carpet in both rooms, which were now coated in dust, bird nest materials and bird skeletons. We rolled up the carpet pieces in the third bedroom and discovered some truly awful linoleum:
The carpet was also pulled up in the second bedroom:
The hallway had linoleum in it as well, so we played pass the parcel and unwrapped the top two layers in hopes of finding a nice present underneath. The two bedrooms either side have floorboards so we assume the hall is the same but the bottom layer may have asbestos backing so that can stay where it is for the time being. And it can protect the floor while we address the other major demo job:
Yes, removing the panelling in the second bedroom revealed the back side of the chimney in the front bedroom, complete with its faux brick wallpaper and tile surround (honestly, what’s with the faux décor in this house? Faux brick wallpaper, faux wooden panelling….). But dealing with that is a job for another day…..
If you missed seeing the house before we started destroying it, click here!
