This old house...

Good things are going on with my house but I am not quite ready to divulge the details just yet. Meantime, work continues on John's house. It is an exhausting project even if we are not doing the physical labor.

The rewiring is complete except for the kitchen and bathroom. We expect the electricians to be done on Friday and can't wait. No major offense intended toward Mutt and Jeff (actually Patrick and Jeff) but guys, you are REALLY messy!! I guess handling a broom isn't in the contract. We plan to hire a "disaster " cleaning company to clean out the plaster board from the hardwood floors and whisk away the rest of the fine white dust that is in every nook and cranny. If we had this to do over, we might not!!

Along with the rewiring, we are having the kitchen gutted and rebuilt. Among the many issues uncovered when the walls were stripped down to the support is that a load bearing wall was removed sometime before John moved in (20 years ago), A little creative carpentry has shored up the ceiling and will hopefully support the sagging back of the house for many years to come.

Here we are, smiling in our wreck of a kitchen. Behind us is a wall that is being rebuilt. The brown wall section was once a separate room. The white wall section sits forward more than the brown. New sheet rock will be nailed up to even everything up.

The sink and refrig will go on the left side. Look up and you can see the new joist supports. When the ceiling was pulled down, the joists that are now supported were just hanging there, not connected.

The oak flooring strips designate the old room. The floor, under layers of linoleum and tar paper, is wood (currently stripped down to the tar paper). The wood will be refinished to match the rest of the house.

This was once a very narrow door opening into the dining room. Our contractor has moved some plumbing and enlarged the opening. We hope this will result in an open feeling between the kitchen and dining room.

We always assumed John's floors were oak. Jason, our contractor, picked up one of the floor boards in the kitchen and discovered the floors are beech. Cool! We may have to replace missing or damaged floor boards with oak cause beech is not as easily accessible.

Here is John on our side porch (off the living room). We have added two ceiling fans. The missing fixture is the light fixture. Did I mention that we had to replace almost every fixture in the house? The old service was 100 amp, the new service is 200 amp...the old fixtures don't work. Most fixtures are the oiled bronze look and are mostly modern. It's a fun look with the 1940's house.