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Thursday, June 17, 2021

French apartment renovations, Day 178: How do you put a wall on a diet?

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Run & swim this morning! Then a full work day in the Communist apartment. The first task was to figure out how to shave a few inches off of a wall. I needed to make a fairly large area about 4 cm thinner than it was, because it was sticking out too far as it neared the corner.

(Let's give the builders some credit--it was about 500 years ago!). But to apply drywall flush with the existing wall below, I needed to thin this part of the wall down.

Not an easy task when it's a rock wall!

My solution was to cut multiple channels with the wall chaser (rainureuse), going both vertically and horizontally to make a grid in the wall. Then I gently chiseled the little squares away. I had to repeat the process in one of the areas that was sticking out particularly far.

It worked well and helped not destabilize the entire wall. I only have the "before" video because today was a hot, busy, dusty, stinky work day and I had other things going on.


 

We also sistered up a new ceiling joist next to one of the rotten ones. We were limited in what we could do in the space and given that we couldn't just break apart the entire floor above the apartment. We have one done and about 2 more to go.

I also filled some of the larger holes in the walls to further stabilize the area before we apply the drywall. Then I treated the new wall we built with wood protector and did a few other little things before finishing up late in the afternoon.

Eric brought Inga to the splash pad. Ivy stayed home and was supposed to help me make spicy crab sushi for dinner, but instead she watched Lindsey Stirling music videos.

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