Demolition Day

All of the mess

Today, we started the demolition of our house. We bought the house back at the end of August, and it has taken us a while to get everything together and talk with different people about how to go about this big project. Luckily, Matt's sister is an interior designer and was able to draw us some plans to go by so that we weren't completely working from scratch! This house project has honestly been REALLY intimidating, and there were times I'd walk in, smell that weird old house smell, look at all the work that needed to be done in EVERY room, and start to wonder what in the world we got into...BUT, we've finally broken the work down into smaller pieces, and I'm very excited now! Anyway, we began today, and it was so nice to see some progress! I really had a great time even though my fingers are aching and it's hard to type because of holding a hammer or crow bar all day long. I have to say thanks to Carrie for coming over to help! That was so nice. Also, my dad, mom, brother, and Sammy Earl helped out a lot, too. At one point, I had to take cover because the guys (Matt, David, and my dad) went on what seemed like a rampage all over the same wall. It was down to the studs in no time.
My method was much less efficient and probably too careful. I'd take the hammer and knock the top layer of plaster stuff off down to the horizontal boards. Then, one by one, I'd take the boards down with the crow bar until all studs were exposed. The upstairs was SO much easier. My mom and I attacked it. The walls were some form of foam board. seriously. It was almost identical to the type of foam board you might use for a science project. We had most of that down pretty quickly, but still have some detail work to do around the moulding.
Overall, it was a very productive 7 hours of work! I'm so thankful for all of the help we had. There's noway we could have made that kind of progress with just me, Matt, and Larry.
Tomorrow, we may do some clean up, and a few more walls, but I have a feeling we'll be sore and it'll go a little slower. I will post the pictures once I can get back to my house to load them onto the computer.