Exploratory Demolition

After pulling down the dumb wall in the 2nd floor hallway, we made a few interesting discoveries. The most significant of those was electrical lines laying on the top of the suspended ceiling. This past weekend was dedicated to exploring more of the innards of the house.

Four main tasks were set for the weekend:
1. Remove paneling in stairwell
2. Find source of slump in hallway
3. Figure out the electrical
4. Open bottom stair wall

All of these easy tasks were accomplished. The first one completed was finding the source of the slump in the hallway. There is a noticable slump in the floor (both first and second floors) about 4-5 feet in from the front on the house in the wall opposite the fireplace. This same slump is the source of a slight tilt in the stairway as its only cross support is the at the top of the stairs in about that same location.

An exploration of the basement by tearing out some paneling that was put up as a ceiling exposed the problem. It is an interesting situation. It appears that two of the brick pillars holding up the beam under that wall must have settled. A repair was done on one pillar, adding a half-layer of brick to bring things back into level. Sometime after that repair and possibly because of it, the second pillar must have settled. Now there is about a two inch bow to the beam under that wall between the foundation and the earlier repaired pillar. It seems that a slow lift (small amount per day over about a month) of the beam into level and then a repair to the sunken pillar should mostly correct both the slump and the stairway tilt.

The next task was tearing off the paneling that was on one wall of the stairwell. I wanted to get this off early so I could find out what sort of damage might be behind it. Strangely, the wall was fine. The one wall of ugly paneling must have been done just for ugly's sake. The masonry of the chimney is fine (which was behind that paneling) and there is no evidence of any heat or smoke damage.

The third task completed was figuring out the electrical. Taking out more suspended ceilings cleared up the electrical. A feed line runs up the outside wall of the dining room into the former 2nd floor kitchen. From there it is channeled from room to room between the ceiling and the suspended ceiling. Needless to say, that is unacceptable. However, it should be a fairly inexpensive repair once the walls are opened up. In taking out the suspending ceiling in the bedroom above the living room, I found evidence of water damage that had been poorly repaired. This damage is from prior to the roof replacement. Only the plaster seems to be damaged and that would have been removed anyway. I'll keep a watch on that area to make sure there is no current leak.

The final task was opening up the wall at the bottom of the stairway. There were three reasons I wanted to open it up. First is that we wanted to do something with that wall to make it less boring. We thought about an opening, decorative glass or a niche. In order to figure out what we could do, I needed to see its structure. Secondly, I wanted to find out how difficult scraping off the plaster would be and lastly I wanted to figure out how difficult opening up sections of wall would be.

Scraping off the plaster was a piece of cake, although dusty. Smashing through the wall was not very hard either, although a reciprocating saw would have been nice. The structure of the wall (which I do not want to change) was pretty substantial. The placement of the three supports ruled out a niche or an opening. So, the option of decorative glass will be used. We'll put in two panels of decorative glass in a pattern that mimics the design of the stairway posts. With a light added to the ceiling just outside the basement door, the glass will be backlit and should really make the stairway feel more open at that bend.

Below are some pics of the aftermath of the further stairway work.

Starting point

Paneling down & wall open

Stairway turn

Opening viewed from bottom

Final view of demo