kitchen update: day one, task one

Last night Paul and I decided since we had no plans for the weekend other than church we were going to start the kitchen.

First up? The ceiling. So that's what we did today. Well half of it.

Want to know why old houses are still standing? Because they were made out of plaster. PLASTER people.

Before we got started Paul thought since we had so many cracks in our ceilings that it would all come off in pretty big pieces. After taking five whacks at the plaster we knew that wasn't going to be the case and estimated six hours of plaster removal. Both of us knew that sounded awful but it had to be done and so we got after it. Paul removed about 75% of the plaster (I put in my 25%) and let me tell you what...getting 95 year old plaster off of a 9'-6" ceiling is a pain. We actually finished an hour before we had planned to but were both exhausted and looked like we had come through a chimney. I also didn't think about the fact that the amount of plaster on the ceiling was basically going to be the same amount on the floor. There was a lot of plaster on the floor. Oh - and the dust! Don't get me started on the dust. My whole home needs a bath.

So there is no plaster on the ceiling in our kitchen any longer. The house is filthy. And we're both tired.

We went and purchased the bead board we are going to install on top of the lathe and a new toy to install it with this evening after eating dinner at Ted's. Hopefully we both sleep well tonight because tomorrow after church we are putting the board up. Then paint and light fixtures and we can mark our biggest, most labor intensive task (for us) off of the list!

Photos to come later.