Chapter 10 - Ceilings & Walls

I’ve heard it said many times…”the older the home, the more problems waiting to be uncovered”…and this home is old. Oh no! One problem we didn’t anticipate was with the walls. At first glance, we simply thought we had some wallpaper to remove and then some painting to do. But no matter what we tried on the wallpaper it just wouldn’t come off without tearing the wallboard. This really baffled and frustrated us because we thought it was all ready to just come down almost by itself. (If you look closely at some of the earlier pictures you can see spots where the paper is falling off the wall.) We talked to a couple of pros about our troubles, and at first thought their advice sounded extreme as they told us that it would ultimately be quicker and easier to rip down the walls and put up new drywall. Also, the walls would give us the look of a new home rather than walls 30+ years old with several layers of paint and wallpaper buildup on them.

As it turned out, we weren’t ready to put the sledge hammers away just yet. For those of you who haven’t swung a hammer through a wall before, you just don’t know what you’re missing! At first you feel a bit naughty knocking a hole in the wall, but after your first couple of swings it’s pretty fun! As you can see from these pictures, approx 80-90% of the walls are now gone. It only took us a couple of days to bring it all down and outside to another waiting dumpster (#7 and counting).

You guessed it, more problems were uncovered as we ripped down the walls. We found a few plumbing, electrical and framing issues that will need to be fixed before the new wall panels can go back up. Nothing alarming, really, and its best I guess to get things corrected and done right. Opening up the walls will also make it a lot easier for the electrician and plumber to do their work. With the walls opened up, the plumber can more easily run his pipe for the natural gas line, and we’re asking the electrician to install a few more lights and switches for a minimal cost.

When it came to tackling the ceilings, thank goodness we didn’t have to resort to taking those down too. Every ceiling in the home (including the high vaulted ceiling in the great room) was covered in plaster popcorn bumps. At first, we used a squirt bottle to spray water on the ceiling, which loosened the plaster enough to be scraped off. The process worked well, but it was slow because the hand spray bottle was so small. Looking for a faster process, we thought to fill a large bug sprayer with water instead and it worked great! We were able to spray down a much larger area faster and move right through the entire house in no time. The 70’s are almost gone now from this home!