Seeing Into the Wall

This is what my kitchen looked like when I got home from work today. Yesterday there was a wall; the day before that there were shelves. This is all part of a kitchen remodeling scheme David has been plotting for a while now, which involves busting out a window between the kitchen and dining room. He is doing all the work himself, which I totally admire, but neither of us is quite sure exactly how to proceed. The other day, David said that he wanted to cut a shallow and precise hole in the first layer of wall to see what was behind it. When I suggested he use a steak knife, he responded that he had already tried that. Today he tried something a bit more powerful (I don't know what, exactly, because I wasn't here) and it worked -- one layer of wal gone. I didn't even know that walls had layers. I thought it was just a solid thing (made from "wall material," of course) that separated two rooms. Instead it is two series of horizontal pieces of wood attached to vertical beams, with plaster slathered over them and space (for pipes, wiring, etc.) in between. Who would have guessed?

Comments

[Sadia]

Our home was custom-built, and it's very cool to live in a structure that you saw go up. We know where all the structural pieces are, and we reveled in walking through our walls before the sheet rock went up. Somewhere, I have an entire album of photos of the various layers of house coming together.

[Emily]

I can imagine that it would have been super-cool to see your house come together. I enjoy living in an old house because I like thinking about its history, but sometimes I think it would be nice to have a brand new house that was exactly how I wanted it!