Renovate Brooklyn! TIM-BER!

TIM-BER!

That's what they say when they're choppin' down trees in the forest, right? Well, we've done it! We've chopped down our dropped kitchen ceiling to reveal the tin ceiling above. Looking at the photos to the left, you can see the kitchen pre-chopping, when it is still an oasis of peace and calm. No more, my good friends, no more. OH NO. We hacked right into that lovely plane of un-interrupted white plasterboard and now, two days later, we've got a lot of work ahead of us still. Oy.

Check out the grueling play-by-play down below...

We'd like to give a shout-out to the people who originally put up this drop ceiling. They spared no expense! There were enough wood beams holding up the drywall to build another small building inside our kitchen if we were so inclined. Thanks guys! 

John, in action! It should be stated that he did almost all of the demo-ing, since I've had a swamped work week. I joked that it was my anniversary present. He didn't smile. 

This looks very familiar. Reminiscent of the massive piles of plasterboard that have remained after our other projects. I tell you, the hardest work is getting rid of all of this stuff once the demo-ing is completed. Well, maybe I'm speaking out of turn here, given that I didn't do any of the demo-ing, but did do a lot of the clean-up. My perspective may be a little skewed...

After much vacillating, we called our knights in shining armor, the Junk Removal Fellas from Craig's List, and they swept in to do a rapid-fire haul-out for a very reasonable $100+ dollars. 

Worth every penny! 

We were delighted to discover that almost the entire ceiling was in great shape. A little scraping down and some (A LOT of) spackling would get things nicely straightened out. (The ominous stain on the ceiling, in the photo below, is not actually a blood stain or leak coming from above, but an area where John had scraped off flaking paint. Breathe a sigh of relief...)

It's AWE-SOME! 

As anyone living in New York City can attest, the pre-war pressed tin ceiling is the crown jewel of old tenement buildings. It's why we walk-up many flights of stairs, don't have doormen, tolerate rail-road layouts, and have post-ancient people living in the apartment above us, building a bunker out of tin cans. (Okay, in our case, our budget also explains those "amenities", but you get my point...) The point is the ceiling looks totally and utterly terrific. Even if there is now so much more work spread out before us. 

Once we finish repairing the ceiling, we can tackle the matter of repainting the entire room, which I've been patiently waiting to do FOREVER! Every time it came up, I'd talk myself out of it because the ceiling was eventually going to come down. That day has finally arrived! Hurray! 

(John doesn't look like "Hurray" is what he wants to shout...)

Did I mention the matter of this small (medium-sized) chasm in the ceiling over near the fridge? That might require slightly more than "a little scraping and some spackle" to sort out...

Well, I guess we better get cracking, eh?!