Old and New

This whole project has been about mixing old and new. A fresh start for so many things, while still maintaining traditions. The new ceiling in the front room and living room, is the embodiment of this idea. These two rooms date back to the late 1800's with many of the original beams still intact.

When we took down the drop ceiling (pictured below) we found the awesome beams and searched for the best way to showcase them, while still being able to run electric wire and heating ducts.

My brother-in-law figured out the system pictured above. Tongue and groove boards are cut to length and fitted between the beams. It's been quite the project putting it up, since nothing is level and many of the beams were hand hewed and have various bumps and grooves, making cutting and fitting the beams some what time consuming.

The boards are dropped about six inches from the bottom of the floor on the second floor, leaving room to put in some can lights. It was very exciting yesterday to have the lights installed and turned on (we did the rows with the lights first.)

Steps

The new steps are in! It's amazing how different it looks in the living room. It was easy for me to see how it will look when it's finished -- after the drywall is hung, the walls are painted, the furniture is in place.

A giant step has been taken in our progress with the completion of the living room floor and steps. When we walked through and talked about what had to be done, it seemed much more attainable. Just build some walls here, hang some drywall there, build a closet, paint... Now if only we could work as quickly as team of contractors or those nifty people on home improvement TV shows.

There is still a long way to go, but this journey has taken many steps towards a livable house, and now a whole flight of them are taken!

A Breather

Last week was a flury of activity, but this week is not. Last week the contractor was in and tore out the floor in the living room, pulled down the stairs and filled part of the cellar in with gravel and concrete. We also got drywall hung, demolition done and filled up the big dumpster. Now the dumpster is gone and we can't do much until we have new stairs. There are so many things going on in the rest of my life that I feel like I don't have time to devote to the house and getting it ready so we can move in. I feel slightly conflicted -- I feel like I should be there and doing something, but I also have to get all these other things done. So, I'm chalking it up as a break from the house to get caught up. What's a few days, even a week, in the grand scheme of things?

Moving Materials

Tear it out -- fill the dumpster -- go buy more stuff. That is the new cycle of life in our house. The first dumpster was filled to the brim within a few days. The current dumpster is twice as big and already is about a third of the way full. The picture is our full first dumpster (sorry, but I couldn't get it to go the right way.)

Today we went up to Menard's to get some more materials and supplies for the weekend. After a long wait for the trailer to be loaded we headed home with many 2 x 4's, sheets of drywall and bundles of insulation.

I followed behind in my car. First we pulled over because I noticed that the trailer lights weren't on -- the brake lights and turn signals were on, but not the running lights. We tried to fix it, but had no luck, so got back on the road. We had just gotten on the main highway, when all of a sudden a bundle of insulation came flying at my car. I flashed my lights and pulled over. Leaving my car I walked back down the highway to pick up the bundle. Just as I was getting to it a motorcycle sped by, then a car, thankfully swerving away from the insulation in the middle of the right hand lane.. It had broken open a little bit from the fall, but I don't think anyone had run it over. Did I mention that this happened just a little while ago -- when it was dark? We adjusted the load on the trailer and got back on the highway. As we were merging into traffic a few minutes later I flashed my lights to signal they could get in front of me, but they thought something else had come loose -- a good thing actually because it was just about to. We put another strap around the insulation and hit the road once again.

The rest of the ride was uneventful -- well except for when we went by the policeman directing traffic at the high school football game and they rode the brakes all the way through so it would look like there lights on.

New Discoveries

It seems like each day brings a new discovery -- some good, some not so good. This morning I took down the rest of the ceiling tiles in the house. Upstairs in one of the bedrooms it was pretty much the same as the other upstairs rooms -- a six inch drop and a papered ceiling. Downstairs was a little different.

The first tile I took down sent a cascading shower of debris including plaster, dust and who knows what. These tiles were older (I found out later from my sister that they were there when the previous owner moved in more than 20 years ago.) They were also bigger and had been painted white along with the trim around the ceiling, making it a little more difficult to get apart. There was a series of boards nailed directly to to the plaster and lathe ceiling which supported the ceiling tiles. As I pulled down ceiling tiles I found lots and lots of petrified mouse poop. Not so good I was thinking. Then I found the first mouse skeleton. Gross. I persevered. I found lots more petrified poop and a few bundles of insulation and whatnot that had been nests. Yucky, but okay. I got down to my last few tiles around the edges and I had to take down the trim, so I took a break from the tiles and took down trim. I went back to get the rest of the tiles down. In the front above one of the windows, I pulled down a tile with a huge nest and several mouse skeletons. Gross and creepy. Then back behind the furnace in the hardest to reach place I found another nest and a petrified mouse. I can still it's little feet pointing up towards the ceiling. Understandably, I didn't want a petrified mouse falling on my head. I ended up using another tile held down on the one I was taking out, so the petrified mouse, the nest and whatever else might have been up there didn't come raining down on me. Double yuck! It's a good thing my sister wasn't there -- she would have been freaking out.

Later I took my sister and brother-in-law over to see the ceiling and we examined the ceiling and the holes more closely. It seems like there was a fire in the house at one time. Inside the hole you can see the side of one of the beams is charred and the underside of a section of floorboards are blackened. We thought it might have had something to do with the now defunct chimney nearby.

I've decided that we are going to have to take down the plaster and lathe ceiling. There is just no way I will be able to sit in that room and not think about the mouse superhighway and other things that could be lurking there. Sledgehammer anyone?

A New Beginning

I feel like I've been given the chance to start from scratch. I am standing at the threshold -- both literally and figuratively. A series of circumstances has led me to a point in my life where I have the chance to make major life changes. This has led in part to buying an old house and fixing it up, or at least trying to fix it up. So I have a new threshold, a new home, a new beginning.