Long time no blog!

Contrary to what my blog makes it look like, I HAVE been doing some work.  Mainly on the kitchen and a little bit tackling the jungle in my backyard.

The area in the corner of the kitchen where the old furnace was went from this:

 

to this:

First off, in the kitchen, I tore down a bunch of crumbling plaster over the old furnace chimney.

A lot of people thought I should finish exposing the brick and seal it.  I didn't like the look in my kitchen,  as opposed to say, a modern loft or townhouse in the city.  It just didn't work for what I want to do here.

So I bought some small pieces of drywall.  Home Depot sells them in manageable 3'x3' (I think?) squares so I didn't have to cut down a full-sized sheet of drywall.

I tried several methods of measuring the space that stuck out where I couldn't break up the concrete around the vent hole into the chimney.  I tried lipstick, I tried brown paper.. in the end I just kind of guessed at it and kept cutting it back 'til it fit.

 


Before I put up the drywall, I filled the space around the old pipe with spray foam insulation and primed EVERYTHING with an oil-based primer.

after that I smoothed everything as much as I could with patching compound and decided that eventually, I'm just going to frame the whole thing in with drywall.