Wall Furnace Be-gone

As promised here is the entry on how I erased all memory of my lack or central heat and air, okay half the memory since I still have a hideous window ac unit that is non-functional.

Removing the wall furnace left a gaping hole between my itty bitty hall way and my living room, essentially making my already small home actually seem smaller. On the plus side, you could see the living room television from the bathroom. . .

I had planned to take this on as a total DIY but my father (former wood shop teacher) warned against. So I lived with the hole 2 weeks until good ol' dad could come help me.

So the first step to patching the hole in my PLASTER wall was measuring the length of the lathe, or little wood boards in the wall that hold up the plaster. I measured the lathe so my dad could cut down 2x6 board to "true" 2 x4 size. apparently over time the size of 2x4s has evolved to match up in size with the width of drywall so it actually measures 1.8 x 3.5 or something crazy.


My dad and I then had to frame out the hole with our "2x4s' which included notching out grooves for the gas and electrical line which meant using the skill saw late into the Friday evening (great way to meet your neighbors).

My original plan was to install built in nick knack shelves on the living room side of the "hole", pictured above. That lovely black plastic pipe in my wall ended all that dreaming. It was far too difficult to build shelves around the existing gas line that had been utilized by the heat and ac guys. Also along side the gas line is the electrical for my thermostat.

After all the framing (2hrs of labor) it was time to put up the dry wall! Yep you read that right I patched a hole in my plaster wall with dry wall aka cement board. After cutting it to size my dad and I (mainly my dad) nailed the drywall to the stud frame we had built.


So after the drywall was in place on both sides of the hole, it was time to put on the mud, I'm not so sure what the real name is since my father insisted on calling it mud but I know it wasn't plaster. This job was pretty messy but definitely fun since it meant the end was near! After putting on 2 layers of mud it was time to tackle texturizing. . .

see that nifty roller at the bottom of the picture? that is a paint texturizer that I picked up at Home Depot for a whopping $7. I layered the mud on pretty thick and gently rolled the texturized roller over it and here is the finished product:

The only thing left to do is haul out the paint from the garage and cover it up. Sadly I only have a mobile upload of the almost finished product, here it is: