Old Homes! All that character, workmanship, classic architecture, what more could you ask for?
Actually old homes always are full of surprises (I love old homes), like the home we were in just a while back. It all looked great from the intial consultation. Just go in and pull out the old, out-dated home-theatre-in-a-box system and install some great home theatre speakers to really make the room enjoyable. Well we showed up, drywall saws at the ready. Took down the all the home owners things from the custom built-ins. We took out the shelves and got ready to roll. So there we were, the back of the cabinet cut out, cutting through the lathe and plaster (remember the ‘I love old homes’ bit above)… but it sure seemed awful tough going getting through the plaster. It just seemed like the blades had a hard time getting through the plaster. Plasters a pain, I get it… it just seemed extra tough this time. So we get all the plaster out of the speaker cut out and what do we see? a 1″ stud space, NOT the 3.5″ stud space we were looking for.
So what did we find? We found some great old school construction techniques. Not 1, not 2, but 3 (THREE) layers of brick on the outside wall. So what did we we get to do inside this wonderful custom home? Oh yeah, break out the masonry bits and the cold chisels. After we drilled out a bunch of relief holes in the first layer of brick, we broke out the cold chisels and went to work. A short 4 hours later, and we had the first layer of bricks chipped out enough to allow us the clearance required to install the speakers. So this lovely little job that was going to only take the morning, well it lasted a little longer but the speakers are in and what an improvement will these speakers are going to be. You’ve got the hear it to believe it!