(Before and after one set of cabinets. Click on the photos if you really want to see them in more detail.
Note all the dust in the air -- I'm glad we're wearing respirators.)
Today went slower than yesterday. We finished removing the sheetrock from the ceiling of the "hallway" -- the 6 foot wide area between the foyer and the kitchen proper. We removed a couple of the 13 foot struts that were supporting the dropped ceiling. Both of these involved electricity -- moving (and removing) light fixtures, making sure we didn't cut through a live wire while cutting the wall. We also removed one wall cabinet and one base -- both had been very securely built into their corner, and did not come off gracefully.
Looking up at the ceiling, such as it is -- most of the darker brown is the subflooring for the bathroom upstairs (left or top). That mound in the corner is a sheet of paint that peeled off the ceiling -- heat and humidity and 5 decades of no air? (right or bottom)
The original ceiling is in bad condition. Much of it is missing -- the lathe and plaster is even gone. Sheets of pale aqua paint had peeled off the original ceiling and lay, like, ahem, sheets, over the 2x4 struts above the sheetrock dropped ceiling. By now it is brittle and dry, so they shatter into dust when we would pull off the sheetrock. The other thing that flitters down (aside from paint chips, sheetrock and wood) is mouse turds -- only in one corner (the hallway), although there were heaps of them under the base cabinet we removed. (Tasha has spent many hours fixedly staring at that cabinet, but there's no way to tell if these are recent or ancient droppings.)
We can tell by paint lines (where paint remains) that the room was somehow proportioned differently -- there's a 4 square foot area painted in lines around the former chimney, which is a mystery, and there was something like a pantry, but taller, where the "new" pantry was put.
There was one surprise today. We ripped some of -what we thought was just drywall-paper - off when removing a support strut. Instead, it appears to be a wallpaper (which was painted white when the family moved in) that had been papered over another wallpaper. You can see the 2 x 10 inch swatch we uncovered. It looks 1940s-ish to me. What do you think? (I like this photo, even tho' the wallpaper bit is small, because you can see a bit of HomoDommi's mural in the next room in the background.
5 comments:
Continuing excitement! Thanks for the pictures and blog when I know you were tired.
The "story" the ceiling tells is fascinating - similar to the 'story' our floors told when the walls came down.
We were reminiscing about what a horrible job the tear out is. We did the tear down on our kitchen some years ago - ceilings and walls back to the studs.
It sounds like exhausting work--not just the physical labor but the dirt.
The wallpaper is hard to date. In the 80s there were a lot of papers like this one--big floral prints in that pinky palette--replicating earlier periods. The style seems an unlikely wallpaper for a 40s kitchen, but it is consistent with the 80s sensibility. But the timing seems wrong--the 80s seems too recent to have an extra layer of wallpaper over it.
Just looked at this again because it's so entertaining to read about other people's messes.
I guess the ceiling will just be drywalled - not a huge job - and that will make all the difference. Pretty amazing that sometimes the things that make the most difference are not the most difficult.
OTOH, of course, sometimes the things that seem easy are impossible. Like moving the plug behind my fridge.
I think the wallpaper is earlier - maybe the 30's. Prewar, anyway. We found something similar in our kitchen in Worcester under a doorbell. And that had to be 30's. Also it looks like the wallpaper in one of the bedrooms in Worcester - which was the original paper from 1938, when the house was built.
There's a cool shop in New York that has old wallpapers - http://www.secondhandrose.com/
Maybe you can find something similar there to date it.
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