My mom called Spencer and I up one night and said you have to come look at this old house, they haven't put it on the market yet and they want to sell it quickly. This was last October, almost a full year ago. We went through the process of buying the house and closed on it in March, since then we have been pouring our whole life and every last penny into our little 1925 bungalow.
Yeah....this is not the way the house looked when we first walked through it. Imagine 70's shag orange carpet, about four truck loads of trash and broken furniture, now your getting the picture. So imagine our surprise when we ripped up said carpet and found, funky but totally redo-able wood floors....yessss....all of those months and dreaming payed off.
So we made the choice of ripping down all of the walls, which were made of lathe and plaster. I regret the choice still, even though keeping them would have been an ugly nightmare. When people made homes back in the day everything was more solid, built to last forever, and I wish I would have kept all of the plaster just as a reminder of that time, you know?
Really though, I would not advise ripping down all of your walls,
I don't think we would ever do it again by ourselves. Messiest work ever.
After we cleaned everything up, time for new insulation, or should I say any insulation at all because really when the walls came down, all that came down were the walls, no insulation in sight. Well maybe there were a few newspapers from 1926 shoved around the windows, but that was all.
And windows, we got new windows! The cost of new windows hurt.
New walls up, mudded and in the process of drying. Windows open, something the old ones couldn't do whether they were painted closed or just never opened in the first place,
we are so happy to get a little fresh air in this home.
This my husband built, the fine framer that he is, it was a tiny arch just like the one by the front door so we opened it up a little to make the space seem larger. Best decision we made for the house really.
So we finished the walls just the other day, and now onto the floors, who knows if we are doing this in the right order, but who cares! The whole project is a learning experience, and hopefully we will learn how to do it right next time.
Also don't mind the ceiling we will get to that too, all in time.
