no more plaster! and a little bit of old house love...

i am completely and utterly falling in love with this process. don't get me wrong, we have already had some stressful moments. yes it sucks to live in two rooms. yes, the dust is irritating, etc. but we are lucky to not have many of our belongings here.  its so nice to be living simply. yes. our clothes are in suitcases. we have have only two plates, two bowls, two beer glasses (HAHA. priorities), two forks, one frying pan, one sauce pan and so on. we have a sheet of drywall haphazardly screwed into the ceiling in the bathroom, to prevent the plaster from giving way. we are making due. just fine. 

 i am completely surprised how much i am loving this. ask me again later, i might not say the same. ask nick, he might not say the same.  we shall see. but for now, i love saving this 1920's bungalow. someone before us loved this house dearly, but never invested much more than love and time into it. this our chance to make it live again. it makes my heart happy.  and then, there is the preservation factor. we are contributing to maintaining the spirit of this old neighborhood.  in raleigh, they take old houses like these, in not-so-fancy neighborhoods, and bulldoze them. that is not for us. that is not for this house.  to emphasize that philosophy further, it also feels really good to minimize the amount of things that end up in the landfill. each layer that we pull back i get to reflect on a different time, a different life. its scary. its mysterious. its exciting. its beautiful. i am truly inspired, fascinated and blown away by the emotions that fixing up this house has stirred in me.

okay enough cheeseballishness.

i'll get to the point. 

we are doing the inside in two phases. right now we are working on the front half, which had really bad water damage from that stinkin leaky roof. we have and will have assistance from demos builders for the insulation and for the rehanging of the drywall and also for the roof.  tomorrow we will have the floor re-supported on the "rotten corner". otherwise, here is where we are as of today.

all the ceilings are demo-ed! 

old wiring is cool

the fireplaces are all uncovered and are going to be amazing!

before and afters...

library

before

after

den

before

after

here are some plaster before and afters 

for your entertainment...

den looking towards foyer

before

after

foyer

after

library:

before

after
note: the white door is now a closet. we will be closing off this side and opening it up to the bathroom on the other side of the wall. it will become a linen closet.

 foyer windows and door into library
also known as the rotten corner

and now for my favorite before:

dining room

library

library AND the dining room!

front porch roof

we're almost done with the framing of the roof!

holy schnikees!!!! what a mess!

front of house before

after the front porch roof was demolished

bye bye vinyl vents!
we will replace you with something much lovelier later.

who lives in there???
hmmmm....you need to find a new home buddy.
this house is ours!

rebuilding the roof over the front porch

rainy day...

looks like we're going to be working inside!

 ok i wasn't working inside... i was in beaufort. yep, i left nick all alone to work on the house while i went back to to fire some pots and  pack up the studio. it rained. so the focus was on on demoing the inside. this is what it looked like.  

dining room now

october

dining room wednesday

dining room in october

fireplace in dining room, super cool brick underneath the plaster...BONUS!!!!

second bathroom, debris

october

dining room, another view

den looking towards entry

rotten as all get out

this was the corner of the house where the ceiling caved in during the roof demolition. this was also where the roof moved when you walked on it. even more fun? this is where after we demoed the drop ceiling we notice a crack where the ceiling and the wall met that was "slightly" gaping. this gap eventually revealed the wall seperating from the house. notice the very rotten beams... one of them had rotted down to 4 feet tall. 

(don't worry its fixed now!)

covering the window and the fireplace in the den

same room, october (can't see the fireplace very well though)

breaking it down, this action shot was right in the middle of demo

tarp over front porch and den/entryway after ceiling demo.
hi future roof! just some joists for now....

new joists

roof:second half of deconstruction

where old meets new

back of the house, looking into backyard

old wood...and a foot.

after removing the old wood. starting to remove old frame work.

trash pile!!! this will later be separated into recyclable waste and trash.
 metal and non pressure treated wood will be recycled.

GOODNESS GRACIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh how quickly things change...

two weeks ago, this was our dining room

no this is not an episode of ghost hunters.

 this is now our dining room.

windows in the dining room. 

OH MY STARS!!!!! this is kinda nutty! this picture of the dining room shows the hole in the ceiling caused by rotten plaster from a leaky roof.  the roof is a total rebuild, as you know, and this yucky plaster couldn't stand up to the demolition. BUT its okay, because we were going to rip out that plaster anyway. so, we will call it "pre-demolition". 

demolition disaster

this picture is awesome!!!!  we are removing the trim in every room, one piece at a time, in order to save it. obviously (given the DISASTER seen on the floor in this picture) nick also had to rip down some old paneling (band aid), wallpaper (also a band aid), some old bars that were once over the windows. (really our neighborhood is safe. i promise).

oh, and of course the pile of insulation from the ceiling falling in...

trim removed, numbered and ready to be refinished

 nick has been carefully removing the trim from the dining room. he is numbering them and laying them aside. we will refinish the trim and rehang it once we have ripped out the old plaster, insulated and then come back in with drywall.

i don't know if i will ever stop taking pictures of this. i mean really!!!

after removing the window trim, nick found that the weights and the ropes from the old windows were still in the wall! cool!

sheesh...

wow! sometimes it is hard to believe that we are living in the other half of the house! its like opening the door to the twilight zone! the house is remarkably warm. there is still plenty of insulation above us and we are able to shut some doors to close off the demolished rooms.

 on the bright side. we are doing this right. we are hiring someone to replace the wiring in the front of the house, where it is needed, insulate (after we remove trim and plaster), and rehang drywall. this seems to be the worst part of the house as far as water damage goes. and we will be happy to let someone else manage the worst of it. soon we will have it back in good order! 

the roof is still in progress...i will post pictures later today!