Ryan with his new favorite tool the Sawzall. The old kitchen cabinets were no match for its fury!
A shot of the kitchen cabinets under the counter after we tore the counter off. It's hard to tell from this picture, but there were about 8 million nails securing the cabinets to the wall and floor (you know, in case the cabinets decided to run away).
You can see were the hanging cabinets used to be. We were really surprised to find that they were held up by only nails, no screws. One would think that the cabinets should have easier to remove because of this, however that was definitely not the case, mostly because of the vast quantity of nails used.
After taking care of the cabinetry, we started on the plaster. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into...
Alex taking out some aggression on the wall
The hole in the wall is getting bigger...
More walls coming down...plus as an extra bonus we have Ryan standing in the middle of the kitchen looking like a tool!
We initially thought we were going to save the ceilings (more on this later), so here you can see Ryan using the grinder to cut the wall from the ceiling and Lindsay trying to suck up the ridiculous amount of plaster dust this created (unfortunately we weren't very successful containing the dust)
Wire mesh in the plaster is creating the sparks...what a pain!
This is the view from the kitchen past the stairs and through 2 bedrooms on the first floor after we tore the plaster out
Alex quickly got the hang of (and then got tired of) pulling nails out of the exposed studs
Lindsay cut the grass in order to garner some good will from the neighbors, it was looking a little bit like a jungle before she took over
Surprisingly, this was Lindsay's first time cutting grass (rumor has it that her dad Jack was not satisfied with the straightness of her mowing lines when she was younger)
Taking more nails out of the wall...there was definitely not a nail shortage when Chuck had this house built in the 50's
Can you see how much fun Alex is having??? Anyone out there interested in having this much fun should email us and we'll pick the most qualified applicants (read: anyone who emails us) to have the time of their life doing various renovation tasks around our new house!
WE ARE....PENN STATE!! In case you weren't aware, Linday and I (this is Ryan writing now, we'll both be posting depending on who passes out faster each night after working on the house) are both PSU grads, so this house will definitely have a surplus of Penn State swag
Me rocking one of my grandfather Chuck's old hard hats. It feels really cool to keep in the family the house he and my grandmother Helen made a home of, raised 7 kids in, and took great care of for almost 60 years.
We spent most of last Friday cleaning up the mess we made tearing the plaster walls out of three different rooms. The place looked and felt so much better after a little cleaning up ("a little cleaning up" actually consisted of shoveling up about 40 tons of plaster and Lindsay going around the entire place with the shop vac sucking up all dust and little pieces)
Looking into the kitchen from the first bedroom after we cleaned up the house
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!