In which the rest of the ceiling comes down and we take a day off.

Ahhhhh, it's Friday,  our long anticipated day off from "the blight."  Sore, tired, and satisfied, that is how I would describe my mood this morning.  We had some great progress this week.  We finally got the wooden room taken down, which, with 150 years of dust, on top of the ceiling boards, was one of the messiest jobs so far,  We did make a bit of a mistake as I was taking down the last of the plaster ceiling right next to Greg taking down the last of the wooden ceiling.  My plaster came down first, then his boards and their dirt and grime fell on top of the plaster and created quite the dust storm.  You all may have seen yesterday's post, when Greg was leaving the dust filled room with crowbar and hammer in hand looking like he was headed out to kill a bunch of high school seniors who were having a Halloween party without any adults around.  Look at all the flying plaster dust...we had to vacate the building for about 30 minutes while this settled down.

The results were really pleasing.  The floor joists above are in really nice condition as is most of the floor above, so we hope we don't have to put up a ceiling here and we can have a beautiful loft style space.  

I want to live here...kind of.  Perhaps when we retire to our island paradise (I am waiting for Cuba to open up so we can snag an old Art Deco building and fix that up)

Progress is sweet!

Plaster and lathing between the studs was an early form of insulation.  Our next task is to remove this stuff, which is time consuming, but the plaster is thin and the stuff comes right out.  It does give me the idea that I would love to foam between the studs and then hand plaster over it, leaving a bit of the studs exposed and Tudor-fying the space.  Somehow though I don't think it would be up to code.

But it is a groovy look...imagine bright white plaster with those cross studs.  It would make for a gorgeous room. but I wouldn't want to hang my paintings on the walls!

We start right in, taking the plaster down 

Sorry the photo is a bit blurry, but my tired was hanging out by this point.  This is the front corner of the second floor that points towards Rollies Bar.  We expired after doing this and had to leave to protect our backs and our shoulders.  

 Good news is that the green tarp plaster tube chute is working beautifully!  We added a good six inches more of debris to the dumpster yesterday.  That makes about five tons so far removed from the building.  

 Today Greg is having a long overdue massage.  He worked at the blight about twice as many hours as I did this week.  We are taking a Marden's run break to see if we can  find some windows, or maybe some excellent flooring deals and then we are headed to the museum at Colby for a tour of the galleries while they are being installed.  I am really looking forward to that!