It's been a while since I posted a house update, largely because house guests and other commitments have meant I haven't done much for a while. But the last couple of days have given me the kick to get going again, not least because I really want to seal up as many gaps in the wall as possible before the serious cold weather sets in.
First up was to take down a suspended ceiling. I had lengths of 2x4 the full width of the room, nailed in at each end. But I only had one ladder, which meant the job was tricky because the beams are about 8 feet off the ground. And of course if I pulled the nails at one end it would try and fall to the ground, and the weight of a beam that long is such that you just can't hold it from one end. So I ended up rigging together a brace from another piece of 2x4, with a notch cut in the end. So I climbed the ladder at one end and pulled the nails, then lowered the beam into the notch. The notch was in the end of an 8' piece of 2x4, which my wife could then steady while I went to the other end and pulled the nails. Doing that we managed to get all the beams out in a little under an hour. That just left three pieces nailed to the walls, which I could do myself.
So then I set about pulling two of those three pieces. One was against an interior wall but I needed it removed to get at the one against the outside wall. The first one was relatively easy - it was about 12 feet long and nailed in many places. So I could pull the outermost nails and work towards the middle, and when I got it free I was in the right place to steady it. The second one was tricker - it was more like 16 feet long and some of the nails were in hard. Two nails stayed in place even as I pulled the wood away. And of course the beam is about a third heavier than the 12-foot beam. I'd needed to use my three-foot wrecking bar to pry it off the wall because my smaller prybar just wasn't man enough for the job. And then even with a three-foot wrecking bar it was an effort to get the last two stubborn nails out of the wall. But finally I got the beam down and the nails out of it. Some of those nails were impressive.
Once the beam was down I could pull down another 10-12 inches of drywall and lath-and-plaster that was between it and the primary ceiling, and get a decent look into the space. There were a few large gaps up there. I managed to fill several of them with cement - I used nearly 10lb of cement filling gaps - but a few were in places I just couldn't reach at all so I poked fiberglass into them as best I could using a broken lath. I should be able to get at them from above but that means pulling down another section of wall, which is tricky because it's in a closet that has a lot of stuff in it. I think I can get away with just pulling down a small section at the very bottom, which would mean I don't have to get everything out of the closet. If I can't what I"ll probably do is just stuff lots of fiberglass all around the affected area to stop the cold seeping through any further than necessary.
I'm going to need to take my angle grinder to a particular brick. I've got half a brick sticking into the wall space that I need to cut as flush as possible. I don't know if I can do it with just a masonry chisel but using the angle grinder is going to make a horrendous mess. If I don't cut it back I can't get insulation panels into the space so the best I'd be able to do is stuff fiberglass around the concrete. That seems like a suboptimal solution, given how much time and effort is going into the overall project.
