A little demo here, a little there

Every once in a while Steve gets quite the itch to demo something...and, well, this was one of those weekends.  Yesterday he decided that he should start demoing the plaster in the staircases.  While I generally oppose demo projects too early in the game, I agreed it was a good time to start. First of all, nice to start what will be a huge undertaking and secondly, to expose the hind side of our dining room built-in that we plan to move in order to have our stairs go up from the dining room instead of the kitchen as I have discussed here and here.  We hope that we can get a better idea of what moving this built-in will entail with the hind exposed. 

While Steve was recovering from having a bit too much fun doing a local pub crawl/poker game (p.s., he was one of the winners and scored a t-shirt and 2 restaurant gift cards-not too shabby for a free tournament:), Ben and I headed off to Home Depot and picked up contractor trash bags and 3.5 ml plastic sheeting. We also had to go pick up a new HEPA filter for the shop vac from Sears.  Pricey at $30 but well worth it.

By the time we got back, Steve rallied to party it up in the staircase knocking out plaster.  He first removed the carpet since that didn't stir up any Lead dust.  Since we take all measures to protect from Lead exposure, of course he had on a respirator and we taped him all in.  He bagged everything in the contractor bags when he was done and taped them closed, then he used the HEPA shop vac to vacuum the walls and stairs. 

Steve decided to leave the lath until right before reconstruction occurs.  He didn't want to risk leaving the plaster on the other side exposed since we will be keeping the plaster in the bedroom.  I kinda like the look of the lath.  And if we were keeping the stairs, wouldn't the original fir stairs be killer all stripped and stained?  I am wondering if we can rescue the risers and treads to re-use on the new stairs-hmmmm....

our trash...2 bags of carpeting and 2 of plaster-feel so badly about filling the landfill

After that, I helped dig him out of the enclosure and then I toke over by wet wiping all the walls and stairs with a cleaning solution and water.  Then to be extra careful (we never used to be quite this way before Ben even though we should have been), I double mopped the entire kitchen and vacuumed the house.  Lead be gone!