Stairway to demolition

This was going to be an awkward job. The height on the stairwell was going to be challenging. I was debating on how I was going to get to the top. It's not like a regular room with a level floor and 8ft ceilings.

The top landing was probably 10ft high and the main floor landing was 7ft, and in between there was up to 15ft of wall to take down. I knew it had to be done no matter what. I was committed when I ordered all the building material in January.

So this is what our stairs originally looked like. This area is always chilly in the winter. There's no insulation in the walls so the cold outside conducts it's way in really easily, chilling this whole area. There was some cracking. Not sure from what. But it's significant. You can clearly see it in the photo. Maybe from the house settling. I'm not sure.

But it doesn't matter. It's all coming down.

On Saturday morning we set up all the plastic to limit the dust to just the stairwell. The first thing I did was take out all the trim. And I did this carefully since there will be lots of traffic in this area and it need to show well.

And the trim came out intact, some with a slight crack but nothing too severe, that a little glue and wood filler couldn't fix. Probably from all the practice of the 3 bedrooms I had just done.


It took two days to remove all the gyprock and plaster, but it's done. It was a little awkward getting to the top parts but we got to it. We're done with demolition. Now it's a matter of insulating and putting up the drywall and reinstalling the trim. And repainting everything again.


Click me for more photos of Stairway to Demolition.