Sunday, February 17, 2008

Bees, Mud Daubers, & Spooge - OH MY!

Saturday, February 9, 2008

I have not been in the mood to post lately - sorry to everyone who has been asking.

We took the plaster (which had been covered with drywall) off the ceiling this morning. Whoever put that up - we curse you! Some areas had 20 screws in less than a square foot. Next time we may just use the sawsall instead of chipping away at it. What a hard job! After that we stripped the lath from the walls and ceiling - keeping some of it in tact for "sticking" the air dried wood we will order from the saw mill next weekend. That went quickly.

Some of the housbloggers find such nice surprises in their walls - we found:

Honeycomb - which is quite ironic since one of the previous owners (George W. Imirie) was a master beekeeper. He did not keep bees on this property as this was only a weekend home. Sadly, he passed away in September. There was recently an article in the Washington Post about him. Wish we had a chance to meet him - what a life he led!



Mud daubers nests,
dirt,
and only what I can call
SPOOGE - yuk. We took off all of the lath strips today and cleaned up the hidden treasures.








I'll add photos later of the large beams and trunks of trees that were used for support beams. There was evidence of some termites in the past, but nothing damaging. We have a call in to the bug guy just in case - I would feel better getting the ground treated since this side of the house sits almost on the ground.


Anyway, we were rushing to get to a party, so we cleaned up the slats and here they sit waiting for a bonfire. There is still a huge stump under the pile we have been trying to get rid of.




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3 comments:

Fred said...

Your house looks amazing (judging from the banner at the top). V. cool about the bees in the wall (and an odd cooincidence that a beekeeper owned the place). I've done the plaster removal that you just did in my sisters 80 yr. old townhome. It had been covered with a drop ceiling. WHAT A MESS! The big problem we ran into was that the underlying beams were uneven cuts and had warped. It was very hard to affix any new drywall to them. I later learned that running slats cross-wise would have been the right approach. Here's to hindsight.

Fred
One Project Closer

Anonymous said...

I like the tee-pee we have on the side yard now. ;) Good work. How's the pink hat coming along for you?

Keri & Lee said...

Ooh, someone else has looked at my blog :) HOW EXCITING! We do have uneven cedar beams and plan to cover with poplar v-grove wainscot with about 4 ft of drywall above. Will probably have to do the "slat thing". Thanks for the heads up Fred.