Destruction continues

It's been quite a while since I posted anything but getting this closet out of the room became a major battle. This closet was designed to NEVER come out of this room. The people who built it nailed in every single board from every single direction possible. I spent all day one Saturday tearing out this thing but honestly, sometimes a single 2X4 took me 45 minutes.

When it finally did come out, it revealed all kinds of bad wiring hidden behind it. There was knob and tube, there were wires running into the breaker box that weren't attached to anything. There were wires that they started to run to the ceiling fan and then decided not to, but left the wires there.

Doug has redone and cleaned up the wiring. This took SEVERAL days. He had to fish wires through the ceiling, he had to take down ceiling tiles in the kitchen to find out where things are coming from. He had to rewire the switches in the room and in the process he added three more outlets. That is a total of six outlets he has added to this room since we moved in. Again, if you live in an old house, you know how important that is. We think we are finally ready to begin sheetrocking today.




This was supposed to be a quick project, just rip out the closet and add some bookshelves to the wall. Needless to say, no such thing as a quick project. However, the room feels so much bigger with the stupid, inefficient closet gone, Doug is really happy with the cleaned up wiring, and we might even finish it this week! Don't hold your breath.

And a new project begins

Since we have officially "finished" Rachel's room, I started a new project. This is essentially my project because Doug doesn't care too much about it and he has some other things he wants to do. I'm ripping out a closet and some cabinets in the office. I know for most people it is a capital offense to rip out closets but this one is very ugly and inefficient and lack of storage isn't a problem for us. I only have one "before" picture because this particular storage area was so ugly we didn't photograph it.

We don't need a closet here, especially one where a lot of it is inaccessable because the doors don't open very wide. We need shelves so that is what we are going to replace this closet with.






There was a big cabinet over the door that leads from the office into the kitchen. It was so high that even Doug had to use a ladder to get things out of it. Someone said, "You can store things that you don't need up there." I'm not even going to answer that comment. The other problem with this cabinet was that it made the entrance to the office feel like a cave. Now it's gone and it looks like this over the door.

There was a 2X4 as a header for this cabinet. I was standing on a ladder, knocking on end of it loose and the whole thing came down, smacking me right in the face. Not fun! Teaching that DIY, like swimming, is something not to do alone. Fortunately, I didn't fall off the ladder but I did sustain a wound on my nose and an knot on my head. Notice also, that there is mold or mildew on the ceiling. I'm sure that is from the tornado damage when the roof wasn't covered for several days. A lot of rain came in this back section. The previous owners didn't clean it up so now I will be. It is only in the paint, though, not in the plaster so I can scrape the paint off and it should be clean.

Grand finale

This should be the last post for some time about Rachel's room. We are calling it done even though there are still several issues to address. They won't be addressed for a month or two so she is moved back in and we are saying we finished it. Here are a few shots of the "finished" room.

The floor, as you can see, is the biggest unfinished issue. We'll probably get a carpet remnant for now because we don't want to rent the floor sander until we have several rooms to do. The room is big enough that a lot of floor shows. The room is 15'x16'. Here's another picture of the floor. The center had never, in 100 years, been finished.

She wanted the "retro" look so the closet door got sent to the attic and the door beads came out. They actually look very nice.

She has real curtains over the french doors to the TV room. She also likes her fuzzy pink lamp. This room is definitely not Victorian but it fits Rachel. When she leaves for college we can change the ambiance but right now, it's kind of fun to have a teen-age girl.

Up Close and Personal...

...with our trim! The house had beautiful wood trim when built. Some of it is still here, enough to recreate what is missing. Strange things have been done with some of it. We'll see how many pictures blogger lets me put up. Here is what the original downstairs trim should look like.
This is a stairway window.

Here is a closeup of the actual profile. I believe this pattern is called "egg and dart."

Instead of this beautiful trim all over the downstairs, we get things like this:

Evidently, they just took off the beautiful top cap, probably to "modernize" or "update." (I know it's hard to see because everything was just painted white.)
The one below is a doozy. They evidently took off all the woodwork over the window and just put up a board that was the right height but didn't even bother to cut it off to the right length.

Here is the door to the downstairs bathroom. Just plain old narrow modern trim. What where they thinking!

Tomorrow I'll either have pictures of our upstairs trim or Rachel's virtually completed bedroom. Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Sorry, sorry, sorry!

We've been working so much on Rachel's room that we haven't been posting about Rachel's room! Sorry, sorry, sorry!

Here's where we are.

We have the ceiling and walls painted, the trim back up and the carpet pulled. You can see that the walls are a fairly bright blue and the closet and ceiling are light purple. The trim is light blue. This will actually match Rachel's new bedding beautifully.


The floor is a little curious to us. The very center has apparently, in 100 years, never been stained or finished. Evidently, there has always been a rug in the middle. Around the edges and in the closet, there is a beautiful rich red stain. This was probably the original finish. This is what I would like it to return to eventually. Around the edges, there is some strange gray tacky stuff. We don't know if some old carpet was glued down or what. Getting this off will be interesting. For now, we will be happy to just get the tackiness off and buy a carpet remnant for the center. We will refinish the floor when we have several rooms ready to do at the same time.

Here is her door into the hall. I don't know if I've ever showed this angle before. This room is now so light compared to when we moved in. It's going to be a great teen-age girl's room.