Bare Bones & Boo Boos

As of this past weekend, the Sandwich Shoppe has had all of her windows replaced and been stripped all the way down to her bare bones. They are good, sturdy bones, but they've been slumming it for the past 60 years or so. Not sure what I mean? Read all about the condition that the Sandwich Shoppe was in when we first bought the house HERE and HERE.

I know it's hard to tell from the pictures, but the walls in the front of the sandwich shop were NASTY. Water damaged in some places, cracked and peeling paint everywhere, nail pops and visible cracks between the various pieces of wall board, moldy goodness, broken or unusable electrical sockets, no working lighting...  The list goes on.

To make a long story short, they had to go.

But how to rip them down without taking the ever so pleasant vermiculite shower?? Really, it's not the best way to get clean. I can guarantee it!

Well, if you are my rockin' awesome, spectacularly wonderful sister-in-law Theresa, then you take a sledgehammer, make a small, manageable hole towards the bottom of the wall, and let the vermiculite rain straight into a garbage bag. All while listening to the Hokies getting trampled by the Dukes. MWAHAHAHAHA.

It only took about 20 bags. This process helps to cut down on the giant mess on the floor and only results in the occasional humorous accidental shower of vermiculite.

"Ack! Help! I'm drowning! Make it stop!!!!" *insert Goofy's hooting/falling sound here*

 

FORCE FLEX!! Why must you sell me your pack of lies??

Then, using sledgehammers, flip flops, pry bars, and the Sawzall, we ripped down the remaining walls and miscellaneous shelving, moulding, and old knob and tube wiring.

What do you mean I have to wear sneakers while doing demolition? What's wrong with flip flops??

I just hate wearing shoes, but I wore sneakers most of the time we did demo. Really. I promise. I'm accident prone enough as it is.

I almost always have some kind of battle wound or giant bruise whenever I'm working on the house. In this case, I walked past the tip of the Sawzall blade and it jumped out and attacked me. Poor innocent bystander that I am. Stephen felt my Sawzall boo boo needed Sharpie stitches. They are very important to the healing process.



My wounds often lead to interesting conversations... (My favorite is the concerned, "Does your husband beat you?")

While walking Joseph around in the stroller this morning, I had the following conversation with a random stranger because of my wound.

Strange Man: How is your cat?

Me: My cat?? (Do I know this man? Maybe he's confusing me with someone else??)

Strange Man: You don't have a cat? Then what happened to your arm?

Me: Oh. That. I was attacked by a vicious Sawzall. I think it was foaming at the mouth.

Strange Man: (Seems confused...) Oh. How did that happen?

Me: I was doing a little demolition and construction.

Strange Man: You do construction? Wow. How did you learn to do that?

Me: On the Internet. (Ha. Now I sound like a crazy person. Thank you internet and blogosphere for making me think I can do everything by myself!)


Strange Man: (Riiight.) Uh huh. Well it is a great resource.

Me: Yup. I'm actually restoring an old part of my house. We just finished ripping down all of the damaged walls.

Strange Man: (Must get away from this woman...) You must be very adventurous. Well, have a nice day!

Anyways, back to the original point of this post. Theresa is awesome. Seriously. The girl has given up many of her weekends to help us with our ongoing projects. And she's always so chipper while doing it!



Theresa and Stephen ripped down most of the walls together. I helped whenever baby was asleep, but they did most of the work.

I think I helped more with clean up than with actual demo.

After the walls were down, Theresa even went around and pulled all of the nails out of the studs.

Here's the room with the walls gone:

I know it's not the most exciting room, but it's tremendous progress for us and it makes me happy!