One of the things about buying an older home, however, is that it needs a lot of work. We've already done a lot of landscape clearing and assorted replacements throughout the house (including the garage door, water heater, and the upstairs bathroom toilet). Pretty much anything downstairs is fair game to demolish, as it's severely outdated and poorly designed. You can see our progress in this picture:
And in this picture:
But until yesterday, the downstairs was really the only area subject to demolition. While I've built out three of the closets upstairs, it's generally been the "hands-off" part of the house. Maybe because it's the really pretty part, with its soft yellow paint and honey-colored wood floors. Sure, the doors are warped and some of the window panes are cracked, but asthetically, I still love the upstairs pretty much the way it is!
And yet....
Yesterday I sectioned off the upstairs hallway by taping painter's plastic over all the openings around the hallway. Then I put on baggy pants and a dusk mask, grabbed my new sledge hammer, and turned this hallway:
Into this pile of rubble:
And all the while I was thinking: Why am I destroying my beautiful house?!
I have to say, it was much harder to demolish a part of my upstairs than it had been to rip things out downstairs. I was even a little panicky as I knocked out the wall. ("Why, why, why am I doing this?")
The thoughts and worry persisted for at least ten minutes... Until I began to knock out the far side of the wall. At first I just took out the drywall on the hallway-side of the wall; but I also needed to remove the dryall on the staircase-side of the wall.
(In case you haven't been to my house, look at the picture below. On the left is the staircaseside, and on the right is the hallway side.)
Hopefully that clarifies it.)
When I made that first, big hole in the staircase side of the wall, I was suddenly blinded by bright afternoon sunshine flooding through the window over the staircase, and I remembered exactly why that wall needed to go!
So even though the hallway currently looks like this:
I am happier because there is now more light coming into the house. The hallway went from being dark, like this:
To being lighter an more beautiful, like this:
I guess that's why I am destroying my beautiful house!
1 comment:
ok- I've already seen all this- but I'm excited to see all teh progression. have you finished the nook area we tore out? Guess what? My wrist is still sore from doing that- I have NO strength in my right wrist, like when I lean on something, or lift my self up off the ground- or anythign like that- it's total weakness. Are your wrists sore? and weak? I invisioned being like you when we get our house some day- tearing it apart, but that was SO HARD- and after that I thought "I'm gonna have to be happy with my house the way I buy it cause I'm never demolishing again!" THAT WAS HARD BUSINESS, I don't know how you can keep doing it! But you're doing an awesome job, keep it up if you can handle it! YOWSA! And everythign looks really beautiful. I was going to blog all about it, but I think that's when our computer crashed, and now it's way after the fact, I will blog about it next time we visit, and take some pics, I've been wanting to for my family because I've told them all about it- especially my mom. I got on craigslist and looked at houses just for fun- and it was torture!!!!! EVERYTHING IS SO CHEAP and it kills me! Thanks for sending mike more job ideas, that is really REALLY sweet of you, and considerate. He really wants one of them in particular- I hope he gets it. If he does- we'd live in Salem!
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