The new ceiling is up. It is beautiful. We’re hoping to paint it today. We also have to paint the living room itself, so I need to run and get paint chips in hopes that we can match the color as closely as possible. Once that’s done, I’m going to get in there with two buckets. One will have soapy water so that I can wipe down every painted or metal surface before it reenters the room. The other will have Murphy’s Oil Soap in it, so that I can wipe down everything wooden before it come back in. Best of all, I will be able to mop the floor. It’s going to have scars. No getting around that, but I can’t wait for the smell.
But I also have another thing this afternoon, which I am totally stoked about. I’m going to Andrew Jackson’s house to see about something really, really cool, which I will tell you about, if it comes to pass.
I think the Butcher and I are of the same mind on the den. The sooner we can get the money together, the better. None of the other ceilings seemed to take the presence of the construction guys seriously, but the ceiling in the den has some new cracks and some of the old cracks have gotten more dramatic.
The contractor said he was kind of hoping it’d fall on its own so that he wouldn’t have to try to demo it, but that he was also kind of hoping to get to demo it because Nashville is full of homes with these ceilings, so the part of his job devoted to taking them out is only going to grow, and he’d like the practice. It sounds like he’s thinking that the best way to bring it down safely will be to empty the room, cut the power, cover the floor in cardboard and plastic, shut the doors, seal up the doors to keep the dust down, and then go into the attic and push it down from above. Once the big chunks are down, they can do the remaining demo from beneath.
I don’t know if that’s what they’ll end up doing, but I appreciate that he’s mulling over the safest, least dirty way to do it.
I found this piece of ceiling out in the yard and brought it in to show you. It’s missing the bottom layer, but you get a good sense of how the ceiling was put together. There was a thin layer nailed to the joists, then the radiant heating element was stapled to that, and then this layer of concrete looking stuff was over that, with the thin layer of plaster visible here as the finishing coat.
Tiny Cat Pants 