Tearing Down the House
What better time than the approach of Halloween than to tell you about the horrific chainsaw noise I heard as I walked home from German class a couple months ago. It was the most awful, roaring sound that vibrated deep into my chest.
Sadly, I didn’t have to pause; I already knew where the sound was coming from: our house.
Another wall goes down in Berlin
In the US, did you ever watch your dad patch holes in the drywall when you were a kid? It happened at our house after we banged the doorknob (or ourselves) into the wall a little too hard. The walls were made of 3/4 inch thick drywall and 2×4 inch pieces of wood–NOT pure chunks of drywall like these walls in our Berlin apartment.
We actually had to rent a saws-all to cut the wall out. And needless to say, we weren’t too worried that our house didn’t have doorstops. I dare someone to get a doorknob through our walls.
A lot of wires for lights and plugins were embedded in the walls. We had to chisel them out (with the power out, of course). The entire place was covered in a thin layer of white powder, and we looked like ghosts. The blocks stacked in this picture weigh about 50 pounds each. Yowzers. The entire living room felt much brighter, I’m happy to say. The brown wall looks like it’s going to work, too. Yeah!
The house is so bright now.
So now what’s the plan?
- Walls: Martin’s chiseling off tile right there, then we tore down the last piece of upper wall next to him. The lower half of the wall will remain with shelves on the inside and counter on top.
- Heaters: There are three heaters along the walls we cut out. They provided all the heat for the room. The one in the kitchen is going out. I have already painted the yellow above one heater (right). The third will have countertop over it (covered in a sheet in photo).
- Storage: In the original kitchen, the only places to store food and dishes was above and below the sink. There was about two feet of wasted space above the oven and fridge, so we thought we’d make the new cabinets go all the way to the ceiling.
- Things we want to add: a dishwasher, larger sink, freezer, and microwave–whew! But writing this in hindsight today, Trust Me. We’re going to make this work.
- Things that still have to go: the white, inefficient cabinets and the oven. The oven was too big, and the metal got so hot we had to use pot holders to open it.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Those walls are amazing! You two have a lot of work to do!!! You are very brave. I had fun taking down a couple walls in my sister’s house a few years ago. They are still trying to finish that project! That reminds me. I do have one small wall I would like to move in my house but I can’t get my husband excited about it so it might take a few years to get to it.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
Anais Nin
It is marvelous! Hope you at least keep the walls for the bathroom!
October 10th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Good thing the saws-all was a rental! We HAD to take it back before we could think of tearing down more walls.
October 10th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Oh my gosh! You guys are so efficient! WTG. It’s really looking great. Definitely much brighter in there. Fantastic!
I cannot believe those walls! Never seen anything quite like that. But after all the strange stuff we’ve seen in this place, well I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked. Of course it was built in the 1800’s so they would do all sorts of interesting things and throw just about anything into the wall plaster as needed!
At least you guys have a kitchen to work with! Or rather use until you get a new one. Our first apartment here didn’t have one…and that was not only expensive to put it but also took a while to get delivered! You just never know what to expect in a foreign country lol
January 13th, 2009 at 4:35 am
[...] and the ceiling had little holes where the walls had linked into it like Legos. Here’s what that dusty project looked [...]
February 13th, 2009 at 4:37 am
[...] cut. You can see the smaller, bluer L in the center of our missing wallpaper, which is where our original kitchen walls used to [...]
February 17th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
[...] solid drywall was pretty rough after we cut it apart with the saws-all when we opened the kitchen. To clean it up, we first hand sawed to get the edge smooth. The [...]
July 28th, 2009 at 3:27 am
Amazing work! Amazing.
But – many times you find an apartment in germany with lamps and with kitchen nad no we don’t take care of our garbage in 10 different ways ;-)