So much dust!

Every time I go over to the house, there's more wall missing!  And that's a good thing!  They've now got the entire section of brick wall exposed and have started the laborious task of cleaning the wall.  Underneath the sheetrock is a layer of plaster, and under that is a layer of a tar-like substance.  The sheetrock comes right off, and the plaster chips off easily enough, but the tar is much more difficult.  They'll need to either sandblast it off, or one by one work on each brick.  Either way, it's not a simple task.  We were hoping that there wouldn't be any tar, because not all houses have it, but we weren't quite that lucky.  It's not unexpected, just makes the task a little bit tougher.

All of these things, though, create a ton of dust!  Construction normally makes dust anyway, but cleaning the brick wall exacerbates that.  Taking sheetrock down is a dusty task anyway, but then breaking off the plaster is even worse.  Opening the door this morning, the entire house was hazy, and there was dust on everything!  The workers have made efforts to minimize that, but there's only so much you can do.  They closed doors to rooms, but the dust still found it's way in and coated the floor, and everything just had this white layer on it.  And if we have to start sandblasting, that's gonna increase the dust levels tenfold!

In addition to exposing the brick wall, they've taken down the small wall between the kitchen and front rooms.  It wasn't a big change, but it makes a huge difference in the feel of the house.  Previously, there was a door from the front two rooms to the kitchen, but I never really see any reason to close off the kitchen, so I had the entire 5 ft wide wall removed to open things up a bit.  It just makes the whole house feel a little more open, which is great!

Now, without further ado, more pictures!

The dust was obvious before even walking in the front door!

Every glass surface in the house is coated in dust

The exposed brick wall going up the stairs.  It's going to look really nice when all cleaned up!

Looking into the front of the house from the kitchen, through the newly removed dividing wall!  Feels so much more open!

Every floor in the house is covered in dust, and there are footprints everywhere

The dust has a way of getting everywhere, even behind closed doors!

I think one of my contractors is an aspiring artist!  :-)

And what of all those cabinets from the kitchen?  Well there's now a room full of cabinets in the basement, because they're going to be reused for the bar downstairs after I move in!