Building the wall, continued.

Dan and I threw a housewarming party. Partly because he wanted to throw a party, and partly because we needed something to really motivate us to get stuff done around the house. Our main focuses were the kitchen and finishing up the entry way between the living room and dining room.

We were almost finished with the entry way, it was down to needing one more small coat of spackle, some sanding and then it would be ready to paint. If only that is how things really work. One day shortly before the party Dan was standing back and admiring his handy work when he realized something just wasn't right. Now I don't want to put any words in his mouth, I wasn't there for his realization or his reaction so keep that in mind. But the top wall that we built wasn't straight. In fact, it was horribly unstraight. It was hard to miss, it looked great compared to how it had looked for so long with the horrible jagged edges of plaster and metal mesh, but that didn't change the fact that our entry was lopsided and terribly noticeable once you actually looked.

So we had to rebuild our doorway. Dan tore down all of the corners and we had to go Home Depot for some thin wood to put in some shims and get more drywall. It didnt take that long to fix but it set our schedule for being finished for the party back by about two days. We didnt have as much time to layer the spackle and so the corners and the places where we spackled onto the drywall were noticeable But alas, with a day left before our grand party, we decided to hell with it and just let the spackle dry. Dan painted it the next day, leaving mere hours for it to dry before our party.

Dan and Tara Build A Wall

There used to be a small hold in our wall. It was in the doorway between the living room and dining room. We had to patch it in order for the house to pass the inspection appraisal, it really wasn't a big deal. But, then we had an idea. You see, when you looked into the hole, you could see the glossy reflection of paint on the wall behind it, meaning the previous owners had simply built the doorway out and around the old wall. How easy it would be to tear this wall down and widen the doorway between the two walls! And how much better it would look! So we got to work.

The project did not turn out to be as easy as we had hoped. As we took the corner down we did not find drywall as we had originally assumed we would. Instead, there were layers of plaster and metal lath, so instead of simply being able to cut the walls back to the previous existing walls, we had to rip off all of the plaster. So we ended up taking the wall down to the studs and a bit further back than we had originally anticipated, as you can see here.

Dan also decided to leave the next people who decide to rip these walls down a surprise, and since we didn't have any old playboys, he left the next best thing.

And so the room sat like this for some time, doors closed to avoid the spreading of dust and any disturbance of the dogs. Then some weeks later my parents came out to help us rebuild another wall that we had ripped out upstairs. Long story short, we learned how to build walls. So, a few weeks later after a visit to my parents where I obtained a grinder, we took to finishing the demolition and reconstruction of the entryway.

So it went from this...















..to this...
(pictures from dining room side where wall was not ripped down to studs)

The grinder worked miracles. It was like holding a hot spinning blade up to a huge uneven chunk of frozen butter- not quite as smooth as you would think, debris flying every which way, even up my skirt at one point. But in the end, we got smooth straight edges around the doorway and were set up to build. We had to build the studs out an extra inch to put up the drywall so that it would be even with the rest of the wall. So we did. We then put up the drywall, covering up Dan's profession of love. He looked really stunning with a drill in his hand, if I may say so.

Once the drywall was all up, we put up some spackle and attached some corners and put up some more spackle. It looked great. But it wasn't over yet.