A Constructed Life

I don’t wanna do your dirty work no more…



These photos are from several months ago, but I wanted you to get an idea of how messy it is to demo plaster walls. This is a small portion of the plaster that came down from demoing one room.

Things we learned about demoing plaster walls: 1) Put something down to protect your hardwood floors before you get started. We tried a thick paper we found at the Home Depot and sheets of plywood. Sheets of plywood covered with a layer of thick plastic worked best. 2) When knocking plaster off, work from the bottom of the wall to the top, otherwise the plaster starts piling up at the bottom, eventually covering the last couple of inches of the wall and making it difficult to get at. 3) Wear goggles and a mask that covers your nose and mouth. Plaster dust is really fine and can aggravate your lungs pretty quickly. 3) Clean up is the worst part. 4) Remove the plaster. Clean it up. Then remove the lath. 5) Watch out for the little nails in the lath-you’ll want to wear thick-soled shoes for this.

We used a snow shovel to scoop up all the loose plaster into construction-grade garbage bags. The plastic was really helpful because we could grab its edge and pull it towards us, thus dumping the plaster onto the shovel. The garbage bags were then tossed out the window and stored in our garage until we got a dumpster. After removing all the lath and tossing it outside, we folded the plastic into itself and carried it outside, removed the plywood, swept the floors and then vacuumed up the dust that seemed to be everywhere.

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