Day 16- Getting Dirty

Well the fun part of demolition is the tear down, breaking walls, using sledge hammers etc. But cleaning up always follows and it seems to take just as long...if not longer. Especially when you are tearing down plaster walls that just crumble and turn to dust. So needless to say it is boring to blog about cleaning up but basically half of the time at the house that is what I am doing. I always say I will be sick of cleaning this house before I even move into it...but what I am hoping is that when it is actually clean and livable I will just want to keep it that way all the time.

The whole house is a dusty mess and I have not been able to work upstairs without a mask on since we opened up the walls. The amount of dust and insulation and 80 years worth of crap is just floating through the air and if you are not wearing a mask you will be blowing black snot later that day (just being honest).

So, this past weekend I cleaned and also finished cleaning out all of the attic bays. Once I had decided to tear off the paneling and realized the other boards were behind it and the nasty insulation that was behind that I decided that $500 was worth paying someone else to do it. And it was a good thing I did for the following reasons:

1. It would have taken me a four days to do by myself

2. It was very hot up there and you could hardly breathe even with a mask

3. The brown mexican that went in came out black...seriously

Even this past weekend when I was just cleaning up final insulation residue my arms and face were charcoal in color and my mask was covered in dust. This is what it looked like when the walls were opened up:

This is what it looked like after I paid the guy to dig it all out:

And then I essentially this past weekend I shop vac'd all the little leftover insulation debris, ashphalt shingle debris (that had come through the rooff during tear-off) and 80 year old dust. It was not fun, but felt so good to see this at the end:

And now we are ready for new insulation!