Today was a busy day for house work. We pulled up the remaining 6 feet of carpet and removed about 60% of the nail strips. Just FYI, the last bit of carpet had to wait until I had unloaded two very full bookshelves. The entire acoustic tile ceiling is now a pile of rubble, as is the trim surrounding it. And, between yesterday and today, a full wall of wallpaper has been removed. That leaves us with 2 more walls in the living room, one of which is mostly doorway. There's a little wallpaper in the upstairs hallway, but most of that area is doorways, so it shouldn't be too much work. I'd say about 8 more hours, and all of the wallpaper will be gone (Hallelujia!!!).

Tomorrow, Shayne will begin working on removing the furring strips, which are actually more like 1 by 2s. And of course, they were attached with nails. Big nails. And lots of them. He's going to be using a cutting bit on a Dremel, which worked well on our test strip. He cuts the board on either side of the nail, then uses vise grips to pull the nail and remaining little piece of wood out of the ceiling. We didn't want to use a pry bar; since there are so many nails we thought it would just damage the ceiling more, and we had to get a little creative. We'll see how well it works tomorrow.

Thank God for 3-day weekends...

And not just this week - all the time! Of course, I have to work a 6 day week, but I get 20 more days off per year than a 5-and-2 schedule. I'm hoping to get some serious work done on the wallpaper removal. I'd have to say that I'm about 50% done as far as the amount of paper is concerned. Labor-wise, maybe 30%. that last coat is a beast, even with the sander. It's going SO much faster than before, though, so I'm thrilled.

Walking downstairs to a hardwood floor every morning is making me so happy... It makes a huge difference in the character of the house. It actually looks like an old house now, instead of a 80's explosion. Every time I look at it, I just imagine how nice it will look with all the moulding stripped, and the walls and floor looking fresh and new...

Is there really anything more fulfilling than restoring your own home?

Spontaneous demolition

Last night, we spontaneously ripped out the living room carpet. It started out as removing some woodwork, but somehow Shayne started picking at the carpet...


This is what our living room looks like now...
The floor is in excellent shape, but (as with everything else in this house!) there's something a little odd. It looks to me like some previous owner (probably the one who built walls out of paneling) had an oriental rug in the room. And instead of refinishing the floor, he only refinished around the edges where the rug wasn't. So... The floor has the old finish in the middle and a new finish in an 18" border around the room. Whatever. We have to sand it all down anyways.

It *was* a nice house...

And then we got a hold of it... It now looks something like a crack house. Just about all of the unpainted wallpaper is off, so we moved forward a bit on the whole project. Shayne removed the paneling from the stairway, the trim from those two windows, as well as all of the curtains/curtain rods, and the trim from the front 3 windows. Pictures will be posted tomorrow, but there's no doubt now that we're working on the house. Seems ironic that to make the house look better, we're making it worse. And right now isn't even as bad as it will get. Pretty soon we'll have naked plaster, falling-down ceilings, no woodwork, and no carpet. I'm so excited :)

I need to start a "Why?!" file on the house. Today we found the old sash weights in the windows when we removed the trim. The old wood windows were replaced in the 70s or 80s, but they just left the weights. So we now have 8 (soon to be more) 10lb weights in the office. They're free to a good home, if anyone wants them.

'Why?!" #2 - While removing the curtain rod, we had some problems getting the nails out of the wall. It didn't help that they were 5 inches long... What were these people thinking?

I also found some newspaper in the wall from September 19, 1957. It was behind the paneled section, next to window trim. There's an ad for the Tivoli Theatre in Mishawaka, which was knocked down this past year (I'm still upset about it). It was a movie theatre in 1957, and there are showtimes listed for "The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm" and "Dino". Beiger Furniture was having its 56th anniversary sale. Round Steak was 19¢ per pound at O'Bleni's (which I've never heard of).

I wonder if in 50 years, people will be looking with interest at things that we have in advertently left in this house...

My dilemma

So now we know what the plaster underneath the wallaper looks like. It's really not in bad shape at all. There are some hairline cracks, but nothing wide. No chunks falling off. It's a little bumpy and uneven, but if I look half that good at 80+ years, I'll be overjoyed.

My dilemma now is whether or not to continue removing the wallpaper/liner. It's stuck to the plaster *everywhere*, and it takes about an hour to uncover 4 square feet. The room is about 17.5 feet by 11 feet. With 7.5 foot of wall from ceiling to molding, that equals 345 square feet of wall (1 wall is paneled with heaven-only-knows-what under it, so I didn't even add that one in). Subtract for windows and doorways, and I'd venture to say we still have at least 220 square feet of wall. That's 54 hrs of wallpaper stripping. Plus the stairway and upstairs hall, which adds maybe 50 square feet of wall space.

I feel like I'm taking the easy way out (which I would be) if I cover it all with Nu-Wal, but I don't think I have the time to de-paper the living room, stairs, and upstairs hallway. Since they all flow together, there would be no way to Nu-Wal some of it while leaving the original plaster in the rest. In a way, it would still be historically accurate, since the walls were originally covered before painting. I just don't know... I'd never rip the plaster out, but is it acceptable to cover it in order to expedite the process of having a finished room?

It's definitely cheaper to strip it and paint it. My heart is telling me to have "virgin" plaster walls, but my practical side wants to see a new room ASAP. But restoration isn't about ASAP... It's about patience, love, and hard work. It's about peeling off the crap to uncover what things whould look like. And they shouldn't look like Nu-Wal. They should look like plaster.

In other news, I found the plaster ceiling underneath the acoustic ceiling tiles. This is the plaster I was expecting on the walls; it's cracked, textured, and kinda scary. It's also punctuated by "furring strips" every 12 inches. The reason furring strips is in quotes is because they aren't real strips. More like chunks. They're about 3/4" thick and maybe 1" wide. Solid wood. They're nailed down with what look like roofing nails. What were the previous previous owners thinking?!