And the remodeling officially begins

I am remodeling my living room --mostly out of necessity, because the ceiling is slowly sinking and, if it isn't fixed, the second floor will become the first floor. Okay, that may be a little dramatic, but the ceiling is falling tiny bit by tiny bit. What I have to do is jack the ceiling up and put in an additional support beam.

My parents came over Friday night to get started. We took down the false ceiling, which was easy, then started tearing down the plaster and lathe ceiling above it. That wasn't so easy. Plaster is heavy! Like cement. And the dust it kicks up is unbelievable! The worst part is, both my son and I have a lot of allergies and sensitive noses, so neither of us could be in the room for long without having to step out and catch our breath. My daughter doesn't have that problem, so she ended up doing a lot of the clean-up while mom and dad tore down the plaster.

Saturday morning, mom and dad were back bright and early to take down the rest of the ceiling and my brother came to help a little later. The house was built in 1947 and some work was done on it before I moved in in 1997. I had new siding and a new roof put on immediately and about four years ago, I hired a contractor to completely remodel the bathroom put new windows in throughout the house. After tearing out the ceiling, we discovered why the ceiling was sagging. The original builders were idiots and the contractor I hired was too. The floor joyces are running the wrong way, so the original builders cut into them in several places for electrical wiring, plumbing pipes, and heating vents. If they'd put them the other way, they wouldn't have had to cut into them at all, which you're not supposed to do.

The contractor, seeing that the floor was sinking, raised the bathroom floor to be level, but didn't tell me that my floor was slowly sinking. So now, if we brace the middle of the room, the bathroom floor may also raise. My brother thinks we can unscrew the false braces the contractor put in, raise the floor, then reattach the bathroom ones.

I found out that one of my light switches is running off the original wiring, which is scary.

When we got the ceiling taken down, we decided to take the plaster off the walls, too, because I'll also need additional supports running from floor to ceiling. I'm happy about that, because I'd wanted to take down the ugly paneling that was in there over the plaster, but knew it would be a mess. We started on that, but didn't finish. The kids and I will work on it this week and we'll get back at it full force next weekend. In the meantime, my house is looking like a disaster site! I just keep thinking how nice it will be when it's all done.


These two pictures are taken underneath the bathroom. The lighter boards are the ones the contractor put in to raise the floor in the bathroom. Also shows where they've been cut into for plumbing.




























This one shows the old wiring and all the places they made holes in the joyces for it.