down stairs demo complete!

This long weekend we’ve finally found the energy and focus to finish the demolition of the downstairs rooms that we started a while back.

It has been a year since our first real work on this house. The anniversary and approaching autumn reinforce the feeling that we have reached a milestone. We’ve finished demo work for a little while and get to start putting things back together.

It feels like we have more work ahead of us now than it did last year at this time; we know so much more about what needs to be done and what that involves. Autumn feels closer this Labor Day weekend than last, maybe because we know how cold this house can be in the winter.

This weekend we finished pulling all of the plaster and lathe off of the walls. We’ve also pulled the trim, which led to some soul-searching. We’ve wanted to keep as much of the original detail and woodwork as possible but we’re resigned to replacing most of what we’ve taken off. After decades as cheap rental property, all of the wood is abused — chipped, nailed to death, cracked, and under countless layers of (lead) paint. The fact that Siewers has exact replacement pieces and the idea of the lead abatement are two factors that have mitigated the sense of loss.

With the walls clean, the extent of the termite damage is made clear. Some repair work wil need to be done, I’m just not sure how or to what extent. We’ll be seeing informed oponion about this. With the plaster down, the deficiencies in the exterior siding can be easily seen as well.

We pulled the mantle from one of the two fireplaces down there. It is a neat mantle, but pretty wasted. The three main pieces were chopped to make space for what looked like the attachment for a woodstove. We’re not sure what the material the mantle is constructed of. It is very heavy and dense, like a cross between marble and cast iron. This will be replaced with something from the time period. It’ll be fun to get to start scrounging for that. The front mantle can be saved, if we can figure out how to clean the white paint off of it.

The fireplaces were nasty — a cloud of sooty ashes topped by old leaves and sticks fell out when we removed the covers. We have no idea whether or not we will ever be able to use the fireplaces, that is somewhere pretty far down the list right now.

We found more skeletons, of course. Most are obviously birds, and even have a few scraggly feathers still attached. There is also a most distinct rat skeleton.

[I will be adding pictures to this in a day or so.]