98 Market St.

The library before I gutted it.

I’m two rooms in to an almost total gut job in my old 1850′s home in central Pennsylvania, and I find that as I progress I’m constantly finding better ways to do things. Today I’m left wondering: when I gut a room sheathed in horse hair plaster and lathe, am I doing it the best way possible?

In the first room that I gutted (the master bedroom) I simply pounded at the walls with my trusty Estwing and a truckload of reckless abandon. In hindsight I realized that this method was not the best. First of all, I didn’t bother to protect the rest of the downstairs from dust because I intended to work on it soon after. That was just stupid and I knew I should have hung plastic even before I picked up a hammer. Second, horse hair plaster is heavier than it looks, and it’s a lot easier to shovel it without long sticks of lathe mixed in.

For the second room (the library) I refined my technique, if you can call anything involving a sledge hammer “refined.” Above all else, make sure you’re wearing a respirator for this job!

1. I protected the rest of the house by stapling up a plastic sheet across the interior wall where the library meets the rest of the house. The plastic did an amazing job of keeping the mess isolated.
2. I removed all outlet covers, baseboard heat controls, molding, and anything else on the outside of the plaster.
3. Starting at the bottom corner of each wall, I “speared” at the wall with the wide-end of my sledge hammer. Using the wide edge instead of actually hammering at the wall knocked the plaster off the wall while leaving the lathe in place.
4. Tossed all of the plaster out the window into my dumpster.
5. Pulled the lathe with a hammer and wrecking bar.I decided to take the time and remove all of the nails from the lathe and stack it for use later. This is incredibly time-consuming, but resulted in several pounds of recyclable metal and lots of lathe, which can be reused later for shims, leveling walls before hanging dry wall, firewood, or crafts. If you don’t care about reuse or recycling, skip this time-consuming step and just toss it in your dumpster.
6. Depending on whether or not your walls are insulated and what kind of insulation it is, you may have to remove it as you pull the lathe. I had blown-in urea formaldehyde insulation which looks like packed snow and is especially nasty when you breath it in.  Wearing gloves and a respirator, I pulled this stuff out, bagged and sealed it, and threw it in the dumpster.
7. Some plaster will accumulate behind the lathe. You can shovel it up easily once the lathe is removed.
8. Sweep up and dump any remaining debris with a push broom.
9. Go over the entire room with a Shop-Vac.  Make sure you use a cartridge filter as well as a bag, or the plaster dust could kill your vacuum.

So that’s my process and it worked well for me.  Do you have a better way to remove horse hair plaster and lathe?  Drop a comment below!