O, holey ceiling!

 I made a hole in my ceiling on purpose, and here's how and why I did it.

Last week, I noticed that there was a bit of indication of water damage in the living room, which I eventually traced to a very crumbly pipe leading into a radiator on the second floor. I called in our plumbers, who looked at the situation over, and who said, 

"Yup, it's a crumbly pipe! We're going to need to replace it . . . but before we do, we need to figure exactly how the pipe gets from the boiler to the radiator, so you're going to have to hire somebody to put a hole in the living room ceiling.  We don't do that, but we need to see how the pipes twist and turn there. So call us after those other people make the hole, and then we'll come back and work on replacing the pipe."

I suppose I could hire somebody to make the hole for me, but I know that several times in the past I've seen the repair bill and shuddered, and thought I could do that myself.  . . . So (steels self to destroy part of the house I live in . . . ) So, yeah, I figured I would do my best to make the hole myself.

Tools I gathered

• Drop cloths for the floor
• Stepladder
• Hammer
• Flat head screwdriver (I don't have a chisel).

Our home is old enough that we don't have drywall; I'm already pretty familiar with the fact that our walls and ceilings are plaster. I made like Michelangelo and used my hammer and screwdriver (like a mallet and chisel) to start chipping away. After knocking down about a centimeter's thickness of plaster, I came to a surprise: it looked like metal grating with metal rods.  Oh, heck!  Was there a set of steel bars holding up my ceiling?!?  Because there's no way I could saw through steel bars . . . 

Okay, here I want to say two things.  The first is that, for people, who've done a lot of construction, you probably already knew what I was about to find in my ceiling. I've done plumbing and electrical work around modern homes; I've even put up drywall myself. But I haven't done a lot of construction on older homes, I really didn't know what I'd find---hence the trepidation.

The second thing is that putting on a theater show two years ago gave me a lot of psychological help with knocking a hole in my ceiling. This theater show that I put on met with one roadblock after another: cases of Covid flared up; several actors took other jobs in the middle of rehearsals and we had to find new actors; the administration had numerous bouts of worrying about the suitability of the script, or of the timing, or of the general wisdom of being funny in an academic institution. There were many times that I really figured that the show was doomed, but I made it my mantra to not look too far down the road, and rather to just keep doing what I could to move ahead for now. I promised myself I'd keep trying until there really was no other choice. . .  and miraculously, the show happened, and it was a huge success. 

So as I was looking at my ceiling, and thinking, oh my gosh, I'll never get through that next layer, I remembered the show, and I decided that I would just keep doing what I could until I could make no more progress.

I chipped away a whole bunch of the plaster underneath that metal mesh, and in doing so discovered that the metal mesh was much more pliable and breakable than I had thought initially.  I could get through a bunch of the mesh using my hammer and screwdriver; I also then brought along

• a bolt cutter,

which worked quite well at making snips so I could bend the mesh around and away.  

In the middle of this, I also got

• a bandaid
• work gloves.

Pro-tip: do not get blood on the ceiling.  A ceiling that drips water is one kind of annoyance; a ceiling that drips blood is an entirely different kind of horror film.

I was feeling pretty dang impressed with myself for getting through the plaster, and then the metal mesh, and then another centimeter of plaster, when all of a sudden I discovered . . . wood.  Uh-oh.  Had I reached the floor of the room above?  What was this sheet of wood doing there?

I'm going to say, I nearly gave up and got ready to call in the professionals at that point, but I remembered thing #2 above, and decided that even if I couldn't get through the wood, at least I could clear away all the plaster and grating from the hole from where I wanted the hole, leaving only the wood visible.  So I set back to work with my hammer and screwdriver, and lo and behold, I discovered something wonderful: a hole!  There was space between some of the wood. I hadn't reached a layer that was a solid sheet; it was strips of lath.  A solid sheet of plywood to cut through (above my head, mind you) is really daunting; little strips of lath I can totally handle.  So I added a few tools to my excursion:

• Extension cord
• Jigsaw

I kept working with my hammer and screwdriver, clearing out all the plaster under and between the laths, and then with my handy-dandy jigsaw, I cut through the laths themselves. And, voilà! 

There is a hole in my ceiling, and with a

• bikelight

you can see how the pipes rise up and turn the corner. I hope the plumbers will be happy!  

All that remained to do was to use the 

• broom
• dustpan
• vacuum cleaner.

Tomorrow, when the plumbers come, I'll also get to use my

• wallet

but today's work was completely wallet free!