We Rock! Remodelling an Old Stone House, Part I

This is our big project that we are working on now that we are "retired".  Retirement, you are a lot of work, time to find a day job ;)  

This is what the rooms looked like before we got at them.  It is a four bedroom house so multiply what you see by four, add a bathroom and open area in the middle.

We were surprised to find out that this is a solid stone house, 16" of stone, not stone clad onto wood.  Yay!  We were so proud of our first wall.  Each wall had strapping, then lath and plaster, then at least 3 layers of tar paper, one layer of wax paper (heavy duty) then strapping and drywall.  Not to mention layers of wall paper. Every wall we demolished was 2 walls worth. What a lot of work.  Only the ceiling had insulation, three kinds!  Vermiculite, wood shavings, and fiberglas blow in.  We live in Canada where we get -40 degrees in winter, there was no insulation in the walls at all!

 During the time that we did tear down we  got rid of the top layer of gyproc and first layer of strapping.  At this point we popped off the plaster, then came back and popped off the lath.  The reason we did this was because we always separated the wood pieces from the rest of the mess.  We took the wood home and burned it and the rest went to the dump. 

Here is Johnny (Manuel) ready to do damage!

Day after day we made a mess, and then cleaned it up, made a mess, and then cleaned it up!

Johnny made a trough so we could shovel the junk into it and it would slide down into the truck, my job was to stand in the trailer and spread the debris around so we could pack in as much as possible (we later upgraded to a dumping trailer, that was a big help).

On to room 2

And room 3... and so on, and so on.

 Time to get rid of some of the lath.

This part was enjoyable (and believe me, it was the only enjoyable part).

Finally down to the last wall of the top floor,

and heading down the stairs to the main level.

This is just a small part of the mess that we dealt with day after day.

I couldn't tell you how many truck loads of wood we took out of here, or how many pounds of gyproc and plaster, heavy, dirty, dusty work.  My life has been threatened if I should ever buy an old house again ;)  

And just so you know, I was working beside Manuel all through this, he just never takes the pictures.