Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Demolition - Day 1

On September 30th - I packed a bag, left Mat with our three kids in Massachusetts, and went to Connellsville to start to work on the Soisson House.  (I am just going to call it this from now on.  When you have 4 rentals - you have to be creative, or you lose your mind).  My wonderful husband felt that it was important for me to get a head start on the house.  And I think he felt I needed a little stress relief.

On Saturday, October 1st, my parents and I took our tools, gloves, masks, and goggles and headed over to the house.  The old owners had left quite a bit of stuff behind, so the first task was to consolidate that stuff into a few rooms to get it out of the way.  There was a big garbage pick up at the end of my week long stay, so it would be disappearing with that.  In the meantime, we would have to work around it.

Sidebar - why was so much stuff left you ask?  If you are in the rental property business, you will know that this isn't an uncommon occurrence.  But in this case - we knew ahead of time that personal, unwanted belongings were going to be left in the house.  This house belonged to the previous owners mother - who passed away.  She just didn't have the heart to go through her mother's things - things she didn't want.  So we relieved her of that duty, and she was grateful.

What I wanted to accomplish on my week long stay was to get as much demolition to the second floor done as possible.  Why the second floor?  This is where the previous owner's mother resided.

And she loved paneling.  Loved.it.

There was paneling everywhere - the hallways, the stairs, the bedrooms, the bathrooms....every room.  She also liked pink carpet.  And cats.  Lots of cats.

We put on our game faces, called a dumpster company to deliver the longest dumpster they had, and started hammering away.  Most of the plaster walls had been covered with paneling, so the paneling removal was first.  Unfortunately, the glued the paneling right to the plaster, so the plaster was not able to be saved in most cases.

Did I mention she also loved drop ceilings?  She loved that too.  This is a forgivable offense because it does help with heat cost.  Since the original home would not have had drop ceilings, they had to come out too.

We tackled a lot that first day - knocked down a lot of paneling, and even started chipping away at the cracked plaster.  Behind the plaster was either lattis, or brick wall (which was actually a great find).

We made a big mess, but it was a lot of fun knocking down walls, and taking a first step toward making the house beautiful again.

 This is one of the original fireplaces that survived the constant turnover of the house.  the mirror is one and we have found bits of the original victorian tile around the house.  IT will all stay.  The paneling and drop ceiling.....bye bye
 Original moldings around the windows.  They will be eventually stripped  and retained.
 We started to smash down paneling and discovered a door hidden behind the paneling.  It leads to a staircase that came up from the first floor.  Probably for the servants
 Walls after we removed the paneling and cracked plaster


 This was the original staicase that lead to the second floor.  They put paneling all over the walls and ceiling here too
 In the bathroom we discovered (behind two layers of paneling, drywall and plaster) brick wall


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