Living room ceiling teardown

We've been dreading tearing down the living room ceiling - putting it off and spending a lot of time talking about how we could avoid it - but the inevitable conclusion was that it needed to come down.  Once we dug a little tunnel between the joists to investigate the ceiling fan wiring, we noticed lots of other wires leading upstairs that should also be replaced (or else tear up the upstairs floors later - I don't think so.)  Soooo we finally got around to doing that on Black Friday.  (For the record, the only thing we purchased on Black Friday was contractor-grade garbage bags.)

My 11-year-old cousin Emile, who is a great helper, stowed away in our truck on the way home from my family's Thanksgiving gathering in Southern Maine.  (Here's his sister making French fries and his mom teaching us to restore our dining room table.) He kept us on task.  First we removed everything from the room - enclosed porches make great temporary storage units - then we did the smart thing and actually covered our floor with plastic and sealed off all doorways the best we could.  You never know what's going to happen when 80-year-old dust bunnies make their escape.

Then we readied ourselves.  You don't want to be breathing those ancient dust bunnies and lord only knows what else either.

Game faces, gentlemen

Cocked, locked, and ready to rock

It got messy fast, pulling down the lath strip by strip and dodging flying plaster chunks.

It was actually snowing outside, but this is just dust.

Vintage kid-sized snow shovels make excellent dustpans/plaster scoops

And here's what it looks like now...well, I suppose it is a little cleaner than that.  Just like our most recent adventure in tearing down ceilings, we found all kinds of interesting artifacts tucked up in those nooks and crannies.  But those are for another post.  In fact, there's a lot to catch up on, so please tune in regularly this week!

Also, the only thing I'll be buying on Cyber Monday is more push-button light switches.