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!

plaster demo

demo-ing the rest of the den and the foyer

its an adventure!

nick. post plaster demo.
(no he didn't get in a honky tonk bar brawl)
its a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it...

and then the unexpected....

so its pretty dramatic to be in the house when the demolition begins. its loud. its really messy. you find walls that might fall off.  if your roof is as bad as ours, the ceilings start to crack in other rooms, sag behind ceiling wallpaper and crumbles in (thank goodness for that paneling hammered to the ceiling in my closet! otherwise my clothes would've been plasterized). eventually you get a little numb to it (as best you can) and just keep plugging along. you take a shower at the end of a long day, pop open a beer, start some that laundry and then walk around the house to snap some pictures of a hard days work... but then, the unexpected happens.

melted dryer plug

melted receptacle

close up

another close up

flames up the wall!

nick capped off the wire from the wall

our drier had a weird smell for a long time. we checked the dryer tube and the vent, they were clean. we were running the dryer on low heat. it didn't seem to help much with the smell. then tonight, nick smelled smoke. he knew it was from the dryer but hoped it was from the pizza cooking in the oven. then he followed the smell to find flames shooting out of the dryer receptacle.  he unplugged the dryer. (NOTE TO SELF: BUY FIRE EXTINGUISHER!!!!!)

the fire never progressed. nick capped the wire. the next morning our electrician came over and replaced the wire and the receptacle. the explanation? 

something called arc-ing. nick could tell you what the means...now,  the dryer works fine!

few more night shots:

plastic in the living zone. the only thing separating us from the twilight zone!

future living room, all cleaned up for today

new beam where the corner of the house was rotten and the wall was separating

hello tarp! thank you for being the cocoon that separates us from the elements

the sky up above. post tarp, pre-plywood

future dining room, new beams holding up the rotten corner

oh, yes. that's where the rain came in. this was the day of the inside demolition remember? well, the roof was completely framed. the plywood was mostly up. the small remainder was covered in tarp. but it wasn't enough to stop the rain. 

where the plywood ends and the tarp begins. new framing looking good!

and so tomorrow begins a new day!