Operation Master Bedroom: Phase One

Warning: what you are about to see is not pretty. In fact, it is messy, covered in dust, and probably smells like someone who needs to reapply their deodorant.

When we moved into our house in April, the space that will one day be our master bedroom looked like this:

This past April, Rick demolished an obviously-not-original closet that was in this room. (You can see it in the picture on the right above, right across from the...birdbath...) Since then, we've also ripped out the carpet and re-plastered the ceiling. But since we want it to be our master bedroom, we needed to do a bit more than that, as described in this post about our floor plan. So when we donned our long sleeves, gloves, dust masks, sneakers, and safety goggles and were officially reminded of what it was like to go trick-or-treating in Western NY ("But Mommy! Princess Jasmine didn't wear thermal pajamas and a hat!"), here's what we had in mind (again, see this post if you're wondering why we're getting rid of these things):

Aaaand here it goes:

A regular hammer and a crowbar were our tools of choice for these steps. We tried to reduce the mess by removing large sections of plaster at a time, which we did by using the hammer to sort of "outline" the section we wanted to remove, then using the crowbar to gently pull off that entire section in one big piece (usually about 2'x'2). It's worth noting that we have all plaster walls, and a regular hammer (as opposed to a sledgehammer) might not work if you're dealing with drywall.

See that garbage can? That was our "waste management" system. We looked into renting a dumpster, but even the smallest ones were super expensive, so we instead bought a package of heavy-duty contractor trash bags and filled them with our plaster and lathe. I think total we filled 10 bags, that Rick's dad then helpfully took away on his truck.

(Was I right? Messy. Dirty. Stinkier than a ninth grader who forgot to shower and is now sitting in my classroom after playing kickball in the blazing sun for 85 minutes.)

I should also note that this closet was not load-bearing, which is why we were able to do all of this ourselves without the house collapsing. We got the go-ahead from Rick's contractor dad, who just recommended that we reinforce the door frame before taking down the last section of studs that you see above.

Rick's sister Bethany graciously came over to help do fun things like remove door frames. :)

I got to remove the last section of studs, by the way, because Rick decided that I had mastered the drill and could be allowed to graduate to the next power tool, which he deemed to be the circular saw. I am woman, hear me...saw.

Aaaaaand that's as far as we've gotten. I told you there would be no pretty pictures! Well, okay. Here's a pretty picture for you.

Well. It's the best I can do. I'm feeling sort of...adolescent, what with that lingering scent of someone who needs to re-apply deodorant and/or shower after gym class. I swear I'm not a creepy Justin Bieber stalker. I've managed to cut back my teen heartthrob drooling to once every other Wednesday, and today's the off week.

*Don't forget: if you have someone you would like to show your appreciation to, go here to win four handmade thank-you notes! It's open until Friday. :)*