A Peephole to the Past In Our Dining Room Walls

We’ve got an update on our dining room remodel. Remember how we had a hole in the wall from when our plumbing was all redone?

Lathe and Plaster Walls Exposed

After the hole being there so long, Lynne actually liked seeing the old lath and plaster from the 1850 construction of the wall and was reluctant about closing it up again.  Her mom told her she’d been to old houses that had glass panels in the walls to show the old construction. Lynne loved the idea.  So– Lynne went to TAP Plastics.com and ordered a sheet of plexiglass.  She ended up getting something small (5×7) rather than a big piece.  It cost $10 (but shipping was another $10, annoyingly enough).  The plexiglass arrived in the mail and then life promptly got in the way, and we never did anything about it.

After our little Evie was born, Lynne’s mom, Joy, and her husband, Miles, stayed with us for a while: Joy helped with house and baby stuff, and Miles proactively started fixing things around the house (all of our doors have doorknobs AND can open and shut all the way now!).  He asked if he could fix the hole in the wall, which Lynne and I had grown completely accustomed to seeing and forgot was still there, so we said YES PLEASE!

Horsehair in the Mix

When he was cleaning up the hole to prep it for the new drywall, he was able to salvage a couple of large pieces of plaster.  Miles, having similarly bought an old home in desperate need of renovation when he was our age, explained that, among other things, often times the builders would mix horse hair to help strengthen it from cracking and breaking.  Lo and behold, the plaster had horse hair in it!!

Dollar Store Frame in the Wall

The tricky part was how to incorporate the plexiglass in the drywall, but Joy came up with a clever idea to buy a 5×7 picture frame for a few dollars to frame the plexiglass.  It worked beautifully 🙂

With the vision in place, the peephole was installed in the new drywall and the new, brilliant feature was added to our dining room!

I must say, at first, I was hesitant to go along with Lynne’s vision of adding a peephole to (what eventually will be) our formal dining room, but as usual, Lynne’s vision was right on the money and absolutely fantastic.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Joy and Miles making the project finally happen!  It looks absolutely brilliant, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.