In which we get screwed

Screw You!!

In the back of the first floor is a storage room that we had not yet worked on. It is about 25% of the overall space and had plaster board walls and ceiling.  Underneath the plaster board and the blue board layer was a layer of paper and then old painted, rigid cardboard, probably dating from around the 20s when the building was the farmer's union.  This board was nailed to the walls and the ceiling and then painted a taupe color.....The effect is very Dickensian....talk about Bleak House!

Over the years and through the layers, many..many screws were used to fashion the various stages of the ceiling to the old original ceiling.  Before taking down the cardboard layer, all those screws had to come out.  It is much easier removing the screws than trying to get the rigid cardboard out in anything but small handfuls of pieces.  I want sections to come down together, I mean, its what we are wearing hardhats for, might as well see if they work!  So, each 4 x 8' sections of cardboard must have had at least 50-75 screws in them.  We won't talk about the walls, where the same thing happened.  I had great photos of that mess, but I cracked the screen on my phone and lost all visual contact with the graphics before I could get the photos off.
Look at all those damn screws!

Greg and I figured out a system and had all the screws down out of the ceiling in about two hours.  By that time our shoulders and arms were so tired from holding the drills above our heads that we had to leave.  Today's project is to get the wooden ceiling down...we think this is the last layer.