This Olde House - Hallway Demolition

The hallway which connects the majority of the rooms in our house has always been a source of irritation and embarrassment. We don't like the color. We don't like the textured walls. We don't like the sloppy trim work. We don't like the track lighting. Any one of those things would be bad enough, but everything combined is just short of an endless waking nightmare.

So I called 1-555-BRU-ISER to ordered a large, hulking gorilla of a man to help me out. Kim "AlphaDawg" Hall answer the call. Having ample free time on his hands, he made the journey from Atlanta, GA, just to help me do some stress-relieving demo work.

Pictures: (click any to enlarge) The first picture is BEFORE. Looking from the kitchen to the back bedrooms. Notice the lights and the wall texture and trim work. The second picture is also BEFORE, but I zoomed in on the wall. That's all plaster. It would take weeks to scrape off and make a massive mess. Looming ominously in the shadows is Kim "Bruiser" Hall who is impatiently waiting to la siege. The third picture is a final BEFORE shot. I caught the aforementioned gorilla in mid swing. Unfortunately he doesn't know his own strength and the hammer went through the first layer of drywall and out through the back, leaving a hole in Meg's bedroom that I'll have to patch someday. Luckily, Kimmer only made one such hole. The fourth picture is AFTER. No more plaster-covered sheetrock. No more trim work. Just one happy Kimmer enjoying an eight cup of coffee.

Time Spent: It took almost three hours to take the hallway down to the studs. If we hadn't run into problems with the corners (by each bedroom door) we would have been done in half that time. Aside from the corners, the trim came off quickly and the long walls were a snap.

Tools Used: Claw hammers, Fatmax Extreme Fubar, and a pry bar.

Process: Ripped off the trim first. No problem. Ripped out the long walls. No problem. Ripped off the corners. Big problem! The previous builders used so many nails so close together it was hard for the hammers to find purchase anywhere. In the time it took Kim to clear one corner, I had cleaned off an entire 16ft section of wall and carted all the debris to the trash. Once we finished all the sheetrock, we pulled out all the nails.

What's Next: Oh, boy. This was the easy part. Next we're gonna scrape the ceiling, put in insulation (mostly for acoustic damping), and put up new sheetrock. Later I'll summon Troy to mud and finish the walls, then get new trim everywhere.