Good morning, and Happy Mother’s Day everyone!!! Taking advantage of Daddy and Evie playing outside with the chicks to upload a few pictures of the progress in our big upstairs renovation. These pictures are a bit old now (I can’t wait to share how much has been done!) but I just never seem to make enough time to update the blog as things happen. Anyway, here we are in our old, uncomfortable bathroom about to start demo!
Needless to say, it was extremely therapeutic to get rid of this bathroom!
We made holes in the linen closets too. I felt pure happiness (okay, and a little dread of the whole ‘what-are-we-getting-ourselves-into’).
So to recap, this is our laundry room (after we had moved all of the racks of clothes into our new walk-in closet):
There is a lot of STUFF. I keep a chest of drawers full of gifts I accumulate to give people later. Unfortunately, that chest of drawers also morphed into things I didn’t have another place to store that I wanted to keep for myself, and while I had my own “storage system” (aka this pile is ours, this pile is gifts for others), it was just a tad unorganized.
The first thing the contractors did when they began the serious demo was to tape off the door going from Evie’s bedroom to the laundry room, tape off the door going from the master bedroom to the hallway/ master bathroom, and totally seal the entrance of the hallway from the main hallway upstairs:
(Here is the sealed-off hallway.)
(Below is Evie’s door taped off so as little dust as possible got through.)
Then the guys began to really demolish the space. They entered it through the roof of the back porch so all the debris was taken directly outside, either by way of the back porch or out the windows, and that greatly minimized the dust inside. (Not to worry, still PLENTY of dust despite all this!)
Above is a picture I snuck from the view of the doorway going from the master bedroom to the former hallway/ master bathroom. In one day they took out the entire old bathroom. Just take a look at the walls of what used to be the old bathroom, below:
A close-up:
Below is a picture looking toward the sealed-off hallway.
A bit more demo and this is how the space was looking: down to the 1850s studs.
You never know what you’re going to uncover when you do a project like this, and we weren’t surprised to find less-than-ideal insulation (if you can even call it insulation) in the exterior walls and tons of pipes that were about to totally corrode.
The plumbing was awful, and it cut through lots of floor joists that were supposed to, you know, support the floor. That explains why the floor would sometimes give if you stepped on it the wrong way.
There was practically 0 insulation in the ceiling also, which may explain how crazy our heating bills always are. (Maybe next winter we’ll be presently surprised by the reduced cost thanks to adding insulation???)
One thing of note is the uncovered chimney that goes to the fireplace in Evie’s room (and below that, the fireplace in the dining room). Painted an off-white, kind of creamy color. That goes with my theory that this house– before brick was added to the exterior in the 1960s or so– was white siding. That’s much more traditional for a Virginia farmhouse.
And now, check out the dump trucks on the side of the house and their loot:
There seemed to be debris and trash everywhere. Fortunately that’s all gone now, and the contractors were really mindful of sharp pieces that could hurt the dog’s paws, and everyone escaped the ordeal injury-free. 🙂
I can’t wait to share more progress with y’all later! But for now, I hope everyone has a wonderful, wonderful Mother’s Day.