Down Come The Walls

I’m not one of those HGTV homebuyers who wants everything perfect at the onset. Each of the houses I’ve purchased has needed work. None were falling down, but all had design changes I wanted to make, as well as updates that would change the function of the house, make it more livable.

When I looked at The Coming Home House, the furnishings were very definitely not my style, paint colors were not choices I would have made and the kitchen and bathrooms, which had likely last been updated in the 1990s were in need of updates. But what I saw beyond the cosmetics was good. Walls and ceilings were in good shape without large cracks or sags, the roof was newer and in good condition, the HVAC was relatively new and seemed to be in good shape, and the floors were in excellent condition without any staining or significant sways or unevenness. The way I saw it, The Coming Home House had good bones.

I made my offer to the seller contingent upon a home inspection. The inspection turned up very little except for some minor fixes which the seller took care of and a slight grading problem (easily fixable). I moved in pretty sure that all was in good shape, but also aware that problems could be hidden behind the walls. In a house that was almost sixty years old, I felt certain that I would find some problems here and there, but generally I was optimistic.

Significant changes were needed with
drain lines and line venting. Fortunately,
 it was the only significant problem
 we found.

From the get-go it was clear that there were likely some plumbing issues that needed attention. The toilets in the house didn’t always flush properly and the water pressure in the kitchen was very low, particularly relative to the bathrooms and laundry room sinks. I feared, based on the age of the house, that water supply lines were galvanized metal rather than copper.  Could that, I wondered, be the reason the water pressure in the kitchen was so low? Was there a run of corroded galvanized supply line impeding the water’s flow? Or was it a different problem altogether?

I knew that once demolition began, any problems would show up. No matter how many times you remodel or rehab, you don’t truly know what you’re getting into until you start opening walls. Sometimes, as in my first house when we found signed (by the workers) raw plaster walls under three layers of wallpaper, the things you find are fun and interesting. Other times, they leave you scratching your head. What you hope for most is that you don’t find anything that tells you that there are systemic problems in the house because of shortcuts or other knucklehead moves previous contractors made. So when demolition began, I held my breath.

When drywall was pulled from exterior walls
it exposed that there truly was no insulation.
.

For those who may have been hoping I’d hold my breath until I stopped breathing, no such luck. So far, other than the expected plumbing problems – which were by no means small either in physical or monetary scope – the demolition turned up little in the way of problems. It did, however, expose some interesting things about my house.

Drywall with a skim coat of plaster
over metal lath. Not easy to
 cut through!

I'd heard from neighbors there was little in the way of insulation in the exterior walls of the house. Little apparently meant none. The cinder block exterior walls were covered on the outside with a brick or stone veneer (different things in different places) and on the inside were furring strips onto which a drywall/plaster combination layer has been affixed.  This type of construction, including the lack of insulation, was not uncommon in a house of this type and this age.

The house's interior wood frame walls are covered with a drywall/plaster combination as well. Taking walls out was quite a process as lying on top of the drywall is a metal lath onto which the plaster was laid. Cutting through the lath was not as easy a process as either drywall alone or plaster on top of a wood lath would have been; it had to be sawed through and several times sparked enough to make everyone stop and take serious notice. The plaster, which we found in depths varying between 1/4" and 1/2" was generous in the amount of dust it gave out when pulled down, in part because the lath had to be sawed through and kicked around the plaster dust.  (Ah yes, dust. Part of construction. On some projects more than others. Yes, dust. A later post.)

At first you feel like demolition will
be orderly and neat . . . .

The door framing in my house is unusual in that there is no face trim. The actual door frames are mounted in such a way that the walls "surround" them rather than the frame being laid on top. As such, you can't remove a door frame without seriously damaging the walls. And retrofitting new doors into existing walls is not easy either. Finally, the outside corner beads on the doors are slightly beveled rather than a hard 90° or a curve. All in all, the doors, while they look incredibly simple are proving to be quite intricate and vexing to the contractor. I'll talk more about doors in a later post.

....and then reality sets in.

Demolition is actually a small part of remodeling and rehab and it leaves your house a mess, but it leads the way to the next step. No matter how difficult it feels, I guarantee you, it's not the worst part of the process.  That is yet to come.  That said, with it done, it is now time to move to the next step . . . putting it back together again, but the way I want it!