Sunday, December 7, 2008
Remodeling
If you've ever built a home, remodeled one, or owned a 100+ year-old house, you'll appreciate what we are going through right now. Our house was built in 1900, and was actually moved to this spot in the forties, I think. We bought the house on auction and got it for a really great price. The house had lovely green sculpted carpeting, and paneling wall to wall and floor to ceiling, except the kitchen and what is now Katie's room. I'm talking the doors were even paneled. The kitchen was remodeled in March 1966. I recently found this noted on the back of one of the drawers as I was trying to get it back on it's runners.
We've done a lot to the house since we moved in 10 years ago, but still have a lot to do with hopes of an addition some day. Anyway, Dana is currently working on Cassidy's room. After pulling down the paneling, we found a date on the wall from the previous owner noting when it was remodeled last - 1978. When we moved in, we did a quick fix to Cassidy's room, but this overhaul is long over due.
Dana has done all of the work will very little help from us. There's really not a lot for us to do; his words, not mine. Anyway, he pulled down the paneling, old lath and plaster (I did help a little with that tearing out the lath in the hall) and then removed all the blow-in insulation. If you've ever had the pleasure of working with blow-in insulation, you know what an absolute mess it makes!! Oh, and did I mention that he raised the ceiling and also moved the closet?
You can see from this picture where the new closet will be. We left it in the same spot, just moved it to the adjacent wall. You can also see where the new ceiling will be. The ceilings are so low upstairs that I can touch them standing flat footed. (I'm about 5' 4") Now again, consider when this house was built. The low ceilings would have help to keep the upstairs warmer at night. And believe me, it does!
He's in the drywall hanging phase right now, so he has come a long way in just 10 days. He's added multiple outlets. Cassidy's room only had 2. Yes, I said 2! One between his closet and the window you see in the first picture. Why, you may ask? We don't know. There are a lot of weird things about this house. Granted, the house was built before indoor plumbing, so what do you expect. And whenever it was wired, they didn't have TV's in every room, if they even had one at all!
When we are done with the project, we will have remodeled the Living Room, Office, Cassidy's & Katie's rooms. The rest of the house has a fresh coat of paint. I'll continue to update as we go through the process.
And we still don't have our Christmas tree up yet. I wonder when that will happen?
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3 comments:
Wow..
When you remodel, you really remodel..
I love the idea that the people that remodeled before you, dated their work.. I hope you all did the same..
Holy Cow!! Those are big projects! I agree with Kerri...dateing things for the next people to find is cool. I'll have to remember that the next time we do something.
Yeah, I suppose we should have dated stuff. It's certainly not too late. Although I have to admit, I feel sorry for the next people that might remodel this house. Remember, it was built in 1900!
The coolest things we've found was a note written on a piece of wood about a shipwreck. I can't remember it now (shame one me) but it had the name of a ship and a date. I googled it and it was a ship that sank in the 1800s.
In Cassidy's room, there's a note on a beam that reads "East side on top of plact" I think it's plact, and I don't know what that is. But the writing is what I would call caligraphy. Pretty cool considering it was written over 100 years ago!! I took a pic of it, but it's not very clear.
Wow, that could have been a whole new post!
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