Coming On Along...

Whew, folks. A busy past couple of weeks -- just been in the thick of it!

The back part of the house has been the focus: from ripping out the back bathroom (what John calls the "house boat bathroom") to removing all the paneling & carpet from the back bedroom closet, to tearing out the plaster walls in the back bedroom.

Once that was finished, ahead of us was the back bedroom ceiling and wall, the kitchen ceiling and linoleum floor, and the utility room ceiling and floor.

Lemme just say I'm seriously glad we made the decision to take all the ceilings down (with the exception of the front of the house). They had to go. You saw the pictures and how dirty we were...well, above every ceiling there was over 100 years of accumulated gunk. As I mentioned before, the dining room bead board ceiling was in rough shape. The bead board in the kitchen was in decent shape but the wood grid that was nailed to it (to attach ceiling tiles) kind of ruined it -- and in the process, the gunk started falling out. So, that was that.

Another tough decision that was made was the chimney separating the kitchen and dining room. It was pretty wonky -- the chimney had some curve to it in areas. If it had been straight, it would be much more usable. Now that it's gone, we'll wrap our kitchen cabinets around for more storage space and then put a column of some sort there most likely.

You gotta see this:

Looking from the Dining Room.
Look at the wood floors underneath the two layers of kitchen linoleum. The floor is rough shape -- I mean it's busted! It's wild to see the house stripped down to her birthday suit, so to speak. Because of the Frankenstein quality the dining room floor has because of the floor furnace and numerous other changes over the years, we've decided to put new wood flooring down. I really wish we could salvage them, but in the end, it will be better. In the kitchen, we're going to probably put down some kind of porcelain slate-like tile as long as we can get the floor fairly level!

Looking from the Kitchen.
There's what I'm calling a "trap door" in the kitchen floor, as you can see below. It's a curious thing and makes me wonder if it just goes under the house or might connect to the cellar. Hmmm!

Trap door! 

True confession: We did hire some folks to help us with the rest of this work. A more experienced person needed to take the chimney down, especially. Overall, it helped us finish more quickly because everyone -- electrician, contractor, hearing & air -- is ready to get started.

Feeling the crunch now! Lots of decisions to be made -- from the smallest of details and everything in between. It's truly all-consuming. 😵   (some occasions just call for an emoji)

We've been pricing tile, measuring doors, picking out interior light fixtures and deciding what we like for the exterior, looking at windows, sinks, and cabinets -- the list goes on. Our kitchen appliances were put on order a few days ago and will take about 6 weeks to get to us, which should be about right. (Maybe.) We recently got most all of the light fixtures we need for the interior with the exception of one or two, and of course, have found some neat things to decorate with. Can't wait to show you!

In the meantime, I'm trying to get a blog post going that will show you the progression of the house -- from the beginning to where we are now, so that you can see how far we've gotten. It's kind of amazing.

Have a great week(end) --

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