April 25, 2006
Finally found a little time to do some work on the house. The priorities now are the upstairs bedroom, the upstairs library/office, the stairway, and the downstairs bedroom. I started on the upstairs (Master) bedroom yesterday. Started is really not the right word, since I actually started on it 3 years ago. Resumed, shall we say.
Yesterday was spent removing the old "closet" that someone had added at some point. When they built it, it half-covered the right side door trim. Initially, I was happy to see that they hadn't cut the trim off. Once I started demolishing the closet though, I found that they had used gigantic spikes to connect the closet to the door trim, splitting it in several places.
A bottom-half view
And a top-half view
I did find out a few things though. The original colour of the trim in the house was very close to the green I used downstairs in the Evil Arch From Hell project. I also discovered that the first floor colour (I suspect it was originally unfinished) was burgandy/maroon.
A bit of original floor
I also came across a bit of the original ceiling wallpaper. Like the floor, I am guessing that it was probably either bare plaster or painted originally, but this is the first layer of paper... likely added at the same time as the burgandy paint on the floor.
A brief glimpse of the original ceiling paper.
I don't have a picture, but from what I have found, I think the windows were originally a slightly greenish-grey. Sadly, there isn't much left of the original windows. It's going to take every bit of skill that I have to make them functional again. I've been debating about taking out the replacement window that I installed a few years ago. It doesn't "go" with the house. Today, however, I decided that I might try adding fake muntins down the center of it to make it look like the original windows. Too bad I didn't get the window in straight when I installed it. *sigh*
So, here is a picture of what the bedroom looked like when I called it a day yesterday....
Where the closet was....
The view to the right of the one above.
As you can see, there's quite a bit of plaster on the floor. That isn't the worst of it, either. There was a mound of plaster and wood in the corner that had to weigh all of 1000 pounds. It's gone now. Brianna came over today and destroyed more of the wall. When she got to the bottom, she found that she couldn't go any further due to the plaster piled up around her. So, it was cleaning time. First we picked up all of the larger pieces of lath and chucked them out the window. Then we started bagging.... We used all 15 of the contractor trash bags that I had. Then we drove to Dollar General and picked up a box of 22 1.3mil bags and filled those (double bagging). Finally, we resorted to just tossing crap out of the window. Did I mention that this room was full of clothes and such? Aye....the closet still had my Mom's clothes from 1955 in it. They went bye-bye.
So we loaded up the truck in a drizzly rain...in 43° temperatures. By the time we couldn't possibly pile anymore on the truck, the rear end was sagging. I have NEVER had a load that heavy in my truck before. It's rated payload is 1500lbs. I think we were close. The tires were bulging, if that tells you anything. I was worried about blowing out a tire on the way to the landfill.
So, for $10 (I LOVE having "friends" at the landfill!) we disposed of a ton (literally!) of 150 year old plaster and 50 year old clothes. I think I heard my house breathe a sigh of relief. Bri and I returned to the house, I made enchiladas as payment for her help, and she headed home after scarfing down prodigious quantities of enchiladas and black beans with rice.
Now it's time for pics of how the room looks today....
My wonderful ceiling
This is as far as we got today, demo-wise.
Here's the "pass-thru" vent and heat register. I think I'll move the register to another location.
This is the old doorway into what will be the library/office/guestroom. It's getting closed in so there will be more wall space. Or it might be a closet. Haven't decided yet.
A close-up of the pass-thru grate. I need another one. Anyone have one laying around?
The door to the bedroom. No, it isn't straight. Someone cut it at an angle rather than straighten the door frame. I'll probably cut it some more, make it straight, then shorten the door frame slightly. The transom is downstairs in the basement. At least, I THINK that's where that transom belongs....
So, there you have the latest update on Larry's house. Back to work for me tomorrow, so don't expect anything new until next Monday or so.
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