11.02.22

With trim and finishes in the southeast bedroom removed, we transition to the hardwood. The flooring in the first bedroom did not come up cleanly enough to salvage, so we decide to start removal from the opposite direction to see if it has any effect.

At the suggestion of our technical advisor, Jordy welded together a tool to help increase efficiency. A 2” pipe fixed to a 6” x 8” x 1/8” steel plate acts as an oversized crowbar, increasing leverage and taking up more boards at once. We’ve been told that if executed correctly, hardwood planks should roll off the shiplap, pulling the nails with them. Instead, the nails resist, tearing through the dry fir boards, leaving the tongue trapped beneath.

Surveying the damage, we’re unsure if the strategy failed due to our direction, misuse of the tool, or if the wood is simply too old and dry to salvage. After lunch, we take the heavy steel piece to my cousin’s shop where he welds on an extension. Back at the house, the modifications prove ineffective. The hardwood fights against our efforts at slowness, snapping in the same predictable place each time. Frustrated and tired, we finish the room but leave the remaining spaces upstairs for another day.

11.02.23

Nails are removed from the floor, boards thrown from the roof. Upstairs, I begin to catalogue the doors and trim with Sharpie notes on the unfinished side. Br 2, Main Inside, L. Br 2, Closet Outside, R. The pile of building finishes in the living room continues to grow, but the proliferation of nails along their length makes them difficult to stack.

Jordy takes on the monotonous task of de-nailing each piece, gripping the shaft with a pair of pliers from the back of the board and pulling the head through to preserve the finish. Once a door package is complete, he bundles the pieces together on the kitchen counter with saran wrap before fixing them with tape.

The former mudroom off the kitchen becomes storage space, filling quickly with window headers and trim. Although we have no foreseeable use for the doors ourselves, we’re hoping that they can find a new place in someone else’s home.

11.02.24

A cloud of dead flies and dust fills the air when we bring down the remaining ceiling tiles in the southeast bedroom. With the apertures cleared of debris and the sky free of clouds, the projection emerges with unexpected intensity. Two months ago, in the heart of winter, we stood for ten minutes waiting for our eyes to adjust before the shadowy bands of roof trusses would emerge. Today, sky and structure appear like a photograph on the crumbling plaster.


Roof projecting into the bedroom below.

In the previous room, the building paper lay prostrate, a two-dimensional surface prepared to receive a three-dimensional image. With a desire to engage more fully in the drawing process, we consider the possibility of building a structure within the room to hold and manipulate the paper, capturing views from different apertures and filtering smoke to the ceiling above.

11.02.25

In the afternoon we map out the most substantial projection on the floor with a black chalk line. This time, instead of taping the image to fill in the drawing, we nail lath to the floor in its place. The plan of triangulated trusses becomes the supporting structure on which a larger body of material can emerge, informed by the image coming in from above. The small nails still embedded in the lath are then used to hold the paper in place.

11.02.27

Again in the dark, working against the cold. The process requires us to act as a team, one person holding a strip of building paper toward the aperture, capturing a view, the other aligning sections of lath, drilling holes through and then nailing them into position. A strange creature begins to grow in the room, echoing what remains of the roof and restrained only by our ability to move around it.


Lath structure.

11.02.28

The structure seems to have more limited potential in terms of expansion than we anticipated. With the apertures exhausted, we can only extend based on the shadows the constructions casts on the floor. While initially we imagined that whatever we built would return to the city with us and inhabit our review space, we’re beginning to question its role in the greater scope of the project. In darkness, illuminated by our small headlamps, it is alluring, something unfamiliar and novel. In daylight it is messy, abstracted to the point where there is little elegance to it. The process is also time intensive. Building something new means we’ll have less time to devote to the unbuilding of the house itself.

Unsure of what the next step should be, we spend the afternoon tearing black paper off the windows on the main floor and photographing each room in sequence. The book has evolved into an unraveling storyline of the house as it comes apart. Beginning on the main floor, it travels through existing rooms before reaching the destruction of the southwest bedroom, which triggers a reversal and the first appearance of the black out photographs (shown in the entry for week seven).