Where's Brigid (A Tutorial)

It started with plaster raining on my head while making dinner. Apparently, the 115-year-old chimney had degraded to the point where it was letting water into the attic (and subsequently the kitchen ceiling).  The chimney had to come out.  But it vents the furnace!

We started with redoing the ceiling down to the bones (not just the plaster) and new drywall around the chimney.  An antique light fixture that had been out for a while was finished up, and the entire ceiling was replastered and painted (and the walls where they needed some minor repairs). 

I didn't cry when the original red in which the kitchen ceiling was painted sometime in the 60s was covered up.

Then, to tackle the source of the leak.

A new vent had to be installed through two floors, two walls, and the attic roof before the chimney could be removed.

$15,000 was the low-end quote.

We did it ourselves. 

The closet was the juncture where the new vent would go. Did I mention a 370-pound gun safe that had to come out?  Oh, and that pesky hot water line in the basement?

Once it was reinstalled (you have to pull out the walls and the floor to get that baby out of there now (the wall was rebuilt, the trim and hanging fixtures reinstalled.

It was time to run the new vent up through the second floor and through the roof.

I don't know WHY this old chimney was leaking.

The new vent system is up and running. Tomorrow, weather permitting, the chimney above the roofline will be lopped off (and hauled away) and that area reshingled.  The business that did our roof will do that, the one part of this I didn't want us to DIY (I just don't bounce the way I used to, and that roof has a steep pitch).  

So folks, that's how Brigid and Partner in Grime have been spending their summer vacation.  OK, and building miniature catapults to lob small rocks at one another while playing Mexican Train Dominoes. . . . 

 

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