Living Room

I started doing some more work/demo in the living room.

I don't know if you guys remember or not, but when I took out the flooring and baseboards in the living room, I partially damaged the bottom part of the old air duct in the interior corner of the room. You can see it in this photo.



This duct used to be part of the old heating system (second system?) before it was re-updated, and it's a stacked rectangular duct that used to feed 2 rooms (Bathroom vent currently under the tub - abandoned, and the front half of the Master Bedroom). They left the old vertical duct in place, and just ran a new round duct into it. Looking back on this, I really should have just torn it out when I reconnected the duct for the Master Bedroom (since I had it in pieces and I would have had easier access).

I wasn't sure if I should just patch it, or redo it, but it was busted in such a weird way that it would have been hard to smooth out (not to mention that I'm not sure how well the compound would hold on bare metal).

The original stack was coated in some type of cloth material (probably fireproof asbestos insulation), and then it had a combination of paint and wallpaper, with lots of caked layers of drywall compound over this. It was cracked in places, and VERY lumpy.

I decided to remove it for 2 main reasons. 1: it was ugly as hell and would be hard to patch/fix, and 2: it would be easier to attach my crown and baseboards to a properly framed drywall corner.

Removing this thing (which was slotted down into the floor, and nailed/attached up into the ceiling) was NOT FUN. It was super messy, aggravating, and dangerous (I got a few small cuts on my hands until I finally got smart and grabbed some work gloves).

I managed to remove the slightly busted-up bottom segment first.



With the bottom part gone, I was then able to loosen and yank-down the top. I didn't want to disconnect/disassemble my new ducts inside, so I had to cut away the rectangular duct, which took forever.







It looks like I'll also be able to shrink this down a bit (maybe 2-3" in width).





I also framed out most of the doorway casings (plinth blocks will go in last - after the floors are refinished). You can see how much the wall/floor slopes on this doorway compared the the square opening of the Office door. I'm pretty much out of my new MDF boards (I need to get more), so these casings are a real mix of pieces. MDF on the right, an original Ash board on the left, scrap painted pine for the header, and new parting bead & crown in silver maple.





I'm also working on that Cherry bookcase some more. I just ordered some hardware for it and if I'm lucky, it might come in tomorrow, if not, Monday.