Demolition Phase II

Tonight we scraped the popcorn/glitter ceiling and started tearing out bad places in the drywall for repair.

This is my demolition outfit.  I knew enough to wear a hoodie but only after starting to scrape did I add the safety glasses and bandanna.  I was like a ceiling scraping ninja, I tell you, and then we took turns.  It didn't take that long, but the dust.......remember in my dream home I had a removable roof?  This is one of those times then it would really come in handy.  We couldn't even figure out how to get the kitchen table out of the doors.  So not my kitchen hosts the piano, all of the flooring and the kitchen table.  We just work around it.  You can't even get into the Beautiful Redhead's room, but you can shut the door.  I continue to feel completely at ease with this state of construction.  I don't even wonder why anymore.  Just come on in.  Don't take off your shoes.  Drop a big glop of stuff on the floor?  HA!  No problem.  Just let it dry.  If we have to we can SAND it off!

I really should have bought some masks......but at least I was patriotic.

Scraping that glitter and popcorn off made me think of the sweetest 6 year old boy, who had cataracts, that I babysat when we first moved here.  He looked up and asked me if they were stars.  He had such a magical way of seeing things, and I've always had a fondness for that crappy glitter ever since, because I always thought of his little voice asking that sweet question.
Babies always liked it, also.

But enough.
Goodbye, glitter.  Thanks for the memories.  Those I will keep, you, not so much.

We continued getting everything off the walls and then we started pounding in nails and mixing up the mud.

Real men at work.
Before long the cracks in the walls and ceilings looked like this.

That is the ceiling.  It looks vaguely like Texas from this angle.

After cutting out all the cracks and HOLES in the walls, made by boys and hammers, we were ready to mud and tape.

After being filled, taped and mudded again.

The boys learned how to cut a square around the hole to be fixed.

 For some strange reason, people apparently come into our house and knock holes in our walls.  It's a mystery how this occurs, but it has happened quite a few times.  How lucky that I have boys to fix them.  Ahem.

Then they inserted a small piece of board behind the hole, which was screwed right behind the bare spot, to serve as an anchor.  Then they cut out a piece of drywall about a 1/4 of an inch smaller than the hole, and screwed that to the anchor piece behind.  From there, mud was packed into the cracks and covered with mesh tape, and then covered again.  The cracks will take about 3 layers of the mud, with sanding in between layers.  I am recording this because according to The Angel, this is the right way to do it.  We are not going to waste the time not to do it right.

So now we are all covered in drywall dust, and I do not believe it would be an exaggeration to say we even have drywall breath.
I am buying masks tomorrow.  I may even wear two.  Not that that will help the damage done to us all today, but what can you do.  The boys acted like I was over reacting with the masks until The Angel backed me up.

I do not know why boys (or girls, they are even worse-ai yi yi.  Not that you don't still love them) of a certain age don't think their mother knows anything.  But I don't fight it.  I don't really even care anymore.  It's a phase.  It will pass!  This is not my first rodeo.  All I have to do is to arrange for men they respect to throw in a word here and there.
Thank God for Angels.
And good night.
Tomorrow is coming, and we have much more demolition and reconstruction waiting for us then.