This Old House (Part Two)

After we gutted the house of carpet, we moved in. We had to do some very boring, but expensive jobs after that. Like put on a new roof.

We also had to have the exterior of the house painted and patched. Ka-ching. There wasn't much money left. So, we bought buckets of paint and painted every room ourselves.

We couldn't do much about the old kitchen, so we ripped up the nasty linoleum and painted the floors white. We scraped off the brown, flowered wallpaper and painted the place green.

It wasn't great, but it was an improvement. Years later, we had enough money to gut the kitchen and start over.

We completed gutted the place. Went down to the studs. It was a truly frightening experience. There's nothing like going through a major renovation with two kids and two jobs. Here's an old post showing pictures of the demo job. Here's a post describing the deep exhaustion of renovation. I'll add some more pictures now.

We pulled down this wall that separated the kitchen from the pantry and bathroom. It was a load bearing wall, so the guys had to put in a beam up to support the ceiling.

 

Here are the demo guys trashing the joint. It looks like fun, no?

Drop ceilings everywhere. Why?

Here's what the room liked like sans walls and ceiling.

Then the guys rewired the place, put in lights, walls, cabinets, three windows. They put in new back steps and a backdoor. They repaired some surprising termite damage in a corner. Asshole bugs. And we ate lots of Trader Joe's waffles in the dining room for two months.

Before the guys put in the sheet rock, we made a little time capsule to stick in the walls for future renovators who will certainly mock our good taste. I sealed up a newspaper in plastic and stuck some pictures of the kids and some Happy Meal toys in a manila envelope. The contractor who was a history buff thought that was really cool.

   

What does it look like now? Well, you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Comments

[MH]

Drop ceilings everywhere. Why?

Cheaper to heat?

[jen]

re: drop ceilings, I betcha it was inspired by every-couple-years repairs caused by settling.

At least in our old house, the pattern of ongoing uneven settling around the chimney caused problems for any room with plaster/walls connected to that chimney. The chimney settles at its own pace, while the rest of the house is pretty much in synch. The result? In our house, the kitchen, dining room, and one upstairs bedroom had drop ceilings to fix this problem forever.

I believe modern drywall is less susceptible to this kind of thing, but it's still an issue. My daughter's bedroom upstairs had its ceiling restored to drywall in 2001, and already has cracks that have needed repair.

[MH]

They put a drop ceiling in my office, but they did not move the temperature sensors for the HVAC from their position right below the original ceiling. So when the weather gets cold, we don't get heat until the shift in temperature can register on the other side of an insulated panel.