First order of business in beginning this project is to:
Get room cleared out of all the stuff that had accumulated in it over the years. Since the room was basically unusable as an occupied space, it became very useful as a dumping ground. We called this room the “junk room” and it has fulfilled this use and now is finally being made livable after all these years.
Next:
Prepare for demolition work. We decided to leave the floor in place until last. This way, as we removed the old plaster and lath from the ceiling and walls the debris would collect on the floor for removal to the trash bin. Also, the old floor served as a floor to work off of and it also didn’t matter that it got damaged by falling plaster and lath.
Before we started knocking down the old plaster, we first rolled up the old insulation in the attic above the ceiling.
Let the demolition begin:
Demolition is usually easy. You do need to take some safety precautions (goggles, dust masks, etc). The basic tools needed are a wrecking bar, vise grips, and a hammer. In order to minimize the amount of dust getting into the rest of the house, we closed the door and opened the 2 windows. In one window we put a window fan (set on “high”) exhausting the dust to the outside. The other window served as the intake to create cross ventilation. This greatly minimizes the amount of dust settling/floating in the house. Once these preliminaries were done, we began tearing down the old ceiling. Once you have smashed a hole in the plaster you can begin using the wrecking/pry bar to begin pulling down the old plaster and lath. The vise grips are used to remove any remaining lath nails from the joists. Once the old ceiling is totally removed it is time to begin cleanup. I purchased an inexpensive 33 gallon trash can and a box of 50 heavy duty contractor trash bags. We would scoop up about 50 lbs worth of debris in the bag, then haul it out to the trash bin. The reason for about 50 lbs was only because that weight was manageable and still avoid causing the bag to break. This was mainly for the old plaster which adds up to a lot of weight. With the old lath, we threw it out the window to be used as kindling for our wood stove during the winter.
I have posted some pictures (in a previous post) of the exposed ceiling and the old oak joists . What you see here is the unfinished attic. The BX armored cable you see was for the old ceiling light fixture. This was the only wiring for the room. There were no receptacles in any of the upstairs rooms when we moved here, only single ceiling light fixtures with a wall switch.