Living Room Remodel

[Kurt Aebi]

Well, the wife is back from her cruise and came home to an empty living room.
I was able to get the drywall, strapping, plaster and lath boards down from the ceiling by wednsday. By Saturday, the walls were bare to the studs. What a dirty, dirty dirty job - horsehair plaster from the late 1800's, thank goodness for the Shop-Vac!

Below I have pictures of Before & After and some "treasures" found in the ceiling and walls. One item, in my opinion, is a real treasure - a late payment statement dated Jan. 16, 1899 to the original man who built this house around 1886-1888 William H. Thompson for $6.00 which was a good chunk of change back then. I tracked down at teh town office that we are the 5th owners of this property.

Notice the mailing address (or lack of) on the envelope!

I will be checking in periodically with updates.

[Jim Becker]

One of the pleasures of remodeling an older home are some of the treasures you sometimes find...you really scored, not only with "interest" but with something that provides some additional proviance to your property. I didn't really find anything when I did the demolition for our kitchen renovation last year other than a few coins from decades ago and some small child's game pieces (and a few mouse-mummies), but it was not the first time the place had been gutted. Friends of my parents did work on their farmhouse a number of years ago up in northeastern PA and discovered a lot of old newspaper used as "insulation"...including an intact copy of a newspaper with the news of Lincoln's assasination on the front page. Very kewel find! The previous owner of our property did find a number of colonial era coins, buttons and the like while gardening, however...

BTW, those curtains look absolutely lovely with your wall treatments... :D

[Jerry Olexa]

Kurt If you live in Vermont, add plenty of insulation.. Good start Hard , dirty work taking down the old plaster. Good oppty to upgrade your wiring and plumbing if needed while walls are open..

[Dan Mages]

It looks like you have a good start. How well did they build the place? Is there plenty of structure?? The only thing I found when I remodeled my house was the previous owners dentures. :(

Dan

[Kurt Aebi]

Jim - LOML said I had to put the curtains back up until we had something else to replace them. The house is only 20 Ft. from the main road and at night we didn't want to be looked at like fish in a bowl - lol They really do look nice with the old studs and wide pine sheathing, don't they! lmao

Jerry - You betcha there will be insulation stuffed inside those outside walls. I also have 2 new Buderus radiators going in under the windows at about 5,000 BTU's each. I have these units in the Kitchen and they put out some major heat (my furnace is a hot water boiler - oil fired). When we first moved in there was a oil boiler and wood boiler and we used 4 full tanks (~1100 gal.) of oil and 6 cords of wood each year to keep warm. Since the Kitchen project, we pre-buy $1100.00 of oil and haven't used it up yet (about the last 5 years). Insulating each room as we go will only make it better.

Dan - I knew we had a good structure when we first moved in and was proven again when we added the porch and I wanted to do some work around the sill beam and was able to jack up the entire rear of the house off the foundation (hand laid stone w/o any mortar, by the way) 20 Ft. on either side of where I jacked it up. Unbelevably no plaster even cracked on the inside walls. I used stone blocks on either side of the jack when I worked on filling cracks in the foundation - way too much weight on the jack! The main cape portion of the house is all Post & Beam construction and still in real good shape, in fact I plan on adding some beams from a barn that was taken down a few miles away, so that I can have an exposed beam ceiling in the living room. The Kitchen addition had all sawmill lumber (full dimension - rough) and was very sturdy. We found an old newspaper under the clapboards of that addition dated 1913, so th eaddidtion is quite old as well. They use about 6 3/4" Dia. bolts through the sill beam and first floor top beam to tie the structures together. The builders did a real nice job.

No Box of money yet, though! Oh Well, I guess I gotta continue going to work. :(