This last week I’ve been focused on getting Brendan’s room finished and ready for the painter. So in light of that I took a look at his closet. The closet ceiling had been sheet rocked at some point in the past, right over the plaster. The job looked horrible and you could tell it was done by an amateur. I knew the dry wall had been put up to cover something; why else would it be up there?! But never the less, I decided it needed to come down and be redone so it looked decent.

Once the first few pieces of dry wall was off I discovered the plaster was in bad condition. As I continued to take off the remaining dry wall the plaster caved in, er fell off, exposing the lathe.

It was at this point you could see there had been a leak and the previous owners cut a hole in the lathe, fixed the leak, and put in insulation. Oops, wait a second. How did  know there had been a leak?! I figured that out, because the lathe to the left of the hole was completely rotted and covered in the “m” word. What’s the “m” word?! Yup, you guess it, MOLD! My little project of taking down the dry wall turned into a big project that took us two days to complete. Two days doesn’t sound so bad but when you look at how many hours we put in you realize it was in fact a big, long project.

Since this was my project it was up to me to rip out all of the lath, deal with the nasty insulation that rains down, and of course clean it all up. As of day two I was so frustrated and crabby I decided to take it out by hitting the remaining plaster with my pry bar as hard as I could. All that did was knock off a few little chunks and put insulation down my shirt. At that point I had it. I went to Shane and whined. I wanted him to finish ripping it out and I would clean the mess. My whining worked and he finished the demo stage, as well as doctoring up a rotted out joist.

Once the closet was all cleaned out, Shane put up new insulation. I have to admit that while this was an unexpected project I’m glad we did it. I’m sure I seem crazy since this was a closet and I could have just tried to make the existing dry wall work, but there is a reason for my madness. While it may just be a closet, the right side of the closet is used as a small play room for Brendan. There are shelves full of his books and toys all over the floor. Brendan loves to go in there, shut the door, and play. I’m sure to small child it seems like a fort. Now with this in mind, Shane came up with an idea that we might as well change out the closet lighting  and get it up to code since we’re down to the rafters/joists. It currently has a single incandescent, exposed bulb literally an inch away from the angled ceiling. In our closet the electricians had to put in a florescent pull light to replace the existing one to get it up to code since they worked on wiring in there.

While I like the original lights it does scare me because it gets super hot and its butted up to the ceiling. Shane came up with putting in a light on either side of the door and instead of a pull chain, wiring in a light switch. I love this idea, because the light switch will be low enough for Brendan to control, yet high enough so it doesn’t seem off if we ever do sell this house. Now that I have written a small book  it’s time to get ready for church. Happy Sunday every one!