This mess has been silently awaiting my attention for the past few months and I’ve been wary of even looking. After removing the drywall/plaster/lathe we discovered all kinds of fun stuff. The remaining half of the chimney still intact is surrounded by a water-damaged and dufus-damaged wall. It appears that the water damage that forced the previous owners to remove the outside half of the chimney and then stucco the outside wall also created some structural havoc with the entire wall. This is all combined with somebody’s senseless install of a half window. The hole that was created in the load-bearing wall is entirely unsupported, save for the wood frame of the window. And as you can see in the middle photo, at some point there was an attempt by a three year old to fix the wall. *sigh*

A thrilling shot here of a full dumpster - the last for the upstairs [Update: Not exactly]. Destructo mode complete, we are on our way to actually doing some carpentry and electrical work…

This is the first step towards ridding the downstairs of this massive wall separating the entryway/stairway from the soon-to-be living room area. I made a preemptive strike on this wall because I needed to access some of the existing electrical as well as eventually jack up the beam/upstairs floor.