For the past 3 years, our kitchen bump out wall has looked like this: It’s strips of roof flashing laced together in a basketweave and nailed into the wall. Cute, interesting, and really hard to care for. It was added to the wall in 1999 by the previous homeowners, so it’s also starting to age…
…and get fairly dangerous for a toddler. Roof flashing is extremely sharp – you dont want to handle it without gloves or you will end up with the worst paper cut of your life. I should know – when I started to inspect the construction and plan to remove it, I didn’t see a giant rip in the side and it chewed on my finger pretty badly. Needless to say, I didn’t touch the stuff without gloves again!
Besides being sharp, the flashing was starting to warp, and when E was here, he actually tugged so hard that an entire end came flapping out. I removed the panel that day. It’s insanely hard to keep clean, since whatever towel or rag you use to wipe it gets shredded on the edges of the steel. I’m just over it. So over it.
Using a very tall ladder, a putty knife and pliers, (ooh… and gloves. Big gloves.) I ripped it down, panel by panel. Many many tiny nails, each sheet sounding (literally) like thunder as they were removed. The basket weave was irritating to deal with – I had to remove an entire end before the weave was unraveled enough to start separating the panels.
The wall was so naked when it was down, and the kitchen looked larger, and MUCH brighter. I puttied all the holes and sanded them down – now to paint the wall with some good paint, install shadowboxes and… my cow. Oh yes, a cow. More on this later.
Are you tackling any #slackerprojects lately? We’re really ramping up around here!
Stopped by to welcome you to Collective Bias and the first picture caught my eye. I thought it looked like an amazing design and wondered why in the world you would change it. Oh my goodness I never even thought of those issues before. Glad I read this so I know NOT to do this in my own home. 🙂 Thank you!
It really was a cute idea, but so deadly for our family – I ended up with a scar just from that one rip!! Thank you again for the welcome – it means a lot!