Making a Mess

As if my beautimous bathroom weren't enough for one day, our son came up to help us with a little demolition as well.  Remember the original chimney in the kitchen?  The mortar-coated chimney that's taking up precious real estate?  Well, that took a bit of a beating today.

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These initial pictures show the progress of the mortar removal.  The boy was armed with two 5-pound sledge hammers, one with a chisel side.

Of course, the hubs couldn't let the boy have all the fun.

The initial bricks removed ...

And yes, we're all wearing safety goggles and masks.  There's tons of soot in that chimney and lots of flying debris.

Here, the boy got a little exuberant.  He then closed with a video game reference. (=

 A big chunk of the front portion is gone so far:

And the hubs took over.  The bit where there's a single width of mortar holding up the entire back portion and all the chimney still above the ceiling gets me every time.

The soot went everywhere (even upstairs a bit, though the bathroom was spared).  Even with masks, we all breathed some of it in, so we called it a day.  Good fun was had by us all.