Those of you old timers on the list will remember one of my very first home projects. This took place between Christmas and New years of 2005. There was a large closet in the master bedroom approximately six feet wide, and nearly three feet deep. However, there was just a single 24 inch wide swinging door at one end of the closet. The door wouldn't open all the way since it hit the radiator. The bar for the clothing was hanging in the middle of the closet, front to back, and so this closet had the worst use of space, and the worst access you could imagine. When you opened the door, you would see the left 24 inches of the bar. 48 inches of the bar were to the right of the door, so you kind of had to shove your way into the closet and to the right, to get to anything that had the misfortune of migrating to that end of the bar. Totally useless.
So, I ripped out the entire wall, installed sliding doors, put an upper and lower bar in, closer to the front of the closet, put shelving behind everything against the back wall, and built a large shelving unit in as part of the system. It is now a much more usable space. Well, the closet in the small bedroom, soon to be the nursery, is even worse. It is only barely deep enough to hang a hanger, and at that, the tips of the plastic hangars touch both the front and back wall, so god help you if you actually hang any clothing on the hangars. It is five feet wide, and less than 20 inches deep. It also has a stupid, useless, 24 inch wide door at one end. So in this closet, if anything shuffles to the right of the door opening, it is truly gone, because you can't even force your way into the closet to reach that stuff. Well, that wall is now gone. Over the weekend I decided to rip it down. I first ripped off all the trim around the door, along the floor, all the trim inside the closet, the shelf, the hanging bar, dot dot dot. I used my circ saw with a cement board blade on it to cut up the wall at the right end of the closet on the outside wall, and then across the top to the top of the door opening. I couldn't work the saw inside the closet to do the same, it was just too tight. I started trying to pry the plaster off from the outside, but the edges just crumbled. So, I got inside the closet and just ripped down the plaster willy nilly. Some of it came down in large pieces and some came down in many many many tiny chunks. Let me explain the plaster in this house. It is some kind of precursor to drywall. Breeze called it Beaver Board. It is bands of precast plaster about a foot wide and maybe as long as six or eight feet. They are nailed, horizontally, to the studs. The seams between the boards are plastered, then a heavy vinyl sheet, like wallpaper is glued over everything. Well, after ripping down the inner wall, I was able to gently pry off the outer boards from the inside. They came off nicely, but were heavy as hell. I was then left with two 2X6 studs, on edge. I cut through them with a hand saw at the tops. They were toe nailed into the nice hard wood floor at the bottoms, with six nails in each stud. I am going to build out the frame of the new wider opening so it stands about three inches proud of the wall, then hang wooden, bi-fold doors. After talking with a neighbor, I have decided to rip down the vinyl stuff all over the room as well, and strip the paint from the trim. I would like to remove as much of the lead based paint from the room as possible. yes, ripping down the wall paper stuff, will throw some lead dust into the air, but I will be sealing the room off from the rest of the house, putting a box fan in the window, blowing out, wearing a full respirator, and ripping up the carpeting when I am done. Plus washing down all the walls before having it painted. I've got three weeks before the little angel arrives. OK, I've got three weeks before she is supposed to arrive, but they tell me it could happen any day. I asked Teresa if she couldn't hold out until like February or March. My black eye is heeling nicely. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [email protected] Tel: (412) 268-9081
