Plaster & Lath

As some of you know, we have a rotted windowsill in our bathroom. The window is in our shower, and the sill hasn’t been properly maintained or painted, so it’s all rotted. I have been hinting for months (ever since I moved in) that it needs to be replaced/repaired, etc, but have met with resistance. Largely because, well, it’s the shower, and the problem with fixing it is that our shower would be out of commission for a few days. But finally, after my hints escalated into threats of not paying rent (prompted by the appearance of a lovely line of black rot dripping out of the windowsill and multi-legged bugs), I came home yesterday to find my roommate cheerfully ripping the sill out. Yay! I put on my work clothes and away we went with abandon. The sill gave way to a waterlogged piece of laminated masonite, which was glued to drywall the consistency of wet flour which was screwed on top of the original lath. After we scraped some more, we found original plaster up near the ceiling and there we stopped. I marveled over the sturdy construction technique and despaired of the mildewy black lath (spongy, but drying nicely) and we went over to the Crafty Beaver for some materials. It was at this moment we both realized we were gonna need a piece of drywall and we had no way of getting it home. Oops. Well, everything else fit in my roommate’s Saturn (after we shoved the CPR dummy out of the way—don’t ask), so we have all the other bits: new moulding, sill, etc, everything cut and painted and waited to be installed on top of the drywall, which has yet to arrive.

I know most of you are probably thinking “why are YOU doing this?” when it’s technically the landlord’s problem. Well, even threats of non rent payment weren’t enough to get him moving, but he did offer to pay for materials. And the roommate has construction experience and I know how to plaster and paint with the best of them, so we’re going to knock it together. At least this way it will be DONE and I can finally lift my soap without fear of dislodging a silverfish. The hole in the wall is about four feet by six feet, exposed brick and lath (God I do love that word—so descriptive!), and neatly covered by a painter’s plastic dropcloth while we wait to hear back from an old friend about borrowing a truck…God willing we should have the hole covered up tonight and the whole shebang painted and caulked sometime tomorrow. After that I can proceed with my plans to create a William Shakespeare bathroom…you laugh…