Chimney demo weekend to ring in the New Year

Nothing says Happy New Year like bringing down some old chimneys! We spent New Year's weekend down at the Gladys house tearing things up. There are no fire places in the Gladys house, just 2 stove chimneys that go up through the middle of 4 rooms. This takes up a lot of floor/ wall space in a small house like this one. When we had some work done to the roof, we made the decision to bring the chimneys down below the roof line to remove them completely at some point. In our farm house, we had 2 huge chimneys that were used for both fire places and stoves that we repointed and had custom copper caps fabricated to cover the openings. We had gas logs installed in the 2 fire places and closed off the stove openings. We also had another small chimney in the addition of the house used for a stove. We brought that chimney down below the roof line so we didn't have to maintain it, but we left the actual chimney hidden behind a wall in the laundry room. At the time, I was overwhelmed with decisions, work load, lack of time and didn't really need the floor or wall space that was occupied by the structure so we left it. Removing a chimney just requires a sledge hammer with some strong swing behind it, but it just wasn't a design necessity. I don't have any regrets for leaving it hidden in place, as I can always tear down the wall and expose it when I have nothing better to do in my life ;) The pics below show the old chimney exposed on the interior and then hidden. It sits just to the left of the sliding door from the outside and to the left of the shelves from the inside of the room. We had to do some fab work to the roof and gutter system in the empty space that remained after removing the small chimney below the roof line.

So, for the Gladys house, space is very much an issue and we need to salvage as much of it as possible as we restore the interior space. Had there been fire places in this house, I might have considered keeping one chimney, but that wasn't the case. Removing both of them will allow us to possibly open the kitchen to the living/ family room and connecting a master bath to the master bedroom. I also had the girls remove nails from the bead board from the kitchen to save for a future project. The Gladys house was built in 1900 and our farm house around 1909-1911 we think. Square nails were used in both houses, but only the Gladys house used them in the trim work with much smaller ones. I hadn't seen this in the trim or finish work of our house so it was neat to pull all those small nails out. Or for me, I should say, it was neat to watch them pull them out :) In the third picture, I had my son make me a fish with a cross using a horseshoe and nails from our farm house. Some of my most treasured items are ones that my kids make and are from our property.

We also removed all of the bead board in the living room, including the ceiling. Anytime you are doing demo work in an old house, there is a lot of dust involved. Like about 120+ years of it. The amount of dust that came out of the ceiling and those chimneys just about killed us. I highly recommend wearing a proper mask for this kind of work. This bead board came down a lot faster than the ones in the kitchen. We are not salvaging it and it was installed using much longer pieces. I hate to get rid of original materials, but it becomes hard to store and not worth it if you don't plan to use it. I would be happy to give unused materials to people if there is an interest. But you have to be quick before it goes in the fire or dumpster. This material is long gone.

And finally for a look at the chimney demo. My husband removed the first one without me there just to test run it. I'm a nervous nelly about some things, and thankfully he had the insight to do this. Once I saw that the house didn't collapse, I decided to stand in the back corner of the room while he and a friend hammered down the second one. That was really dumb. I thought the whole house really was coming down and I was stuck in the corner furthest from the door and blocked by the tumbling chimney. (And I screamed like a fool so you won't get to see that video, haha!) The third one is in the space where the rotted floor joists are and again, my husband just knew to get it down before I got there that day. The fourth and final chimney took a little more persuasion with the sledge hammer, I'm sure mostly from the guys being whooped. It looks easy when you're watching, but as Ashlee learned very quickly after taking the sledge hammer for a test drive, it really is difficult. We loaded the fallen bricks into the bucket of a tractor by tossing them out of an open window and then dumped them into the dumpster. And that was all in a New Year's weekend :) Happy New Year y'all!