If we were working on one of them new-fangled buildings (made since WW II) we'd be able to tell you about the fun knocking-down-walls story of demolition... Because we are working on the1900's building we have a different tale to tell- a tale of layers!
Good News!
Our building was built very well and has literally lasted through both floods and fire (more on that discovery later) and poor decorating judgments!
Bad News!
Our building was built very well and has lived a very long and productive life that each succeeding generation of folks has added to in the form of another layer on the walls.
Each wall surface (both sides of each wall) in absolutely every place in the structure, was framed with Fir and then sheathed with tongue-and-groove 3/4" thick pine boards. Then, for about 50 years people would change the wallpaper about every two weeks (not really but the papers layer is impressively thick in some places). Then sheetrock seemed like a good idea so that was added, sometimes more than once, on the same surface... Then, mostly is seems in the 1980's, they felt that putting crappy paneling up would be ultimate insult to this very fine old lady.
And so we get to peel away the layers...
the paneled wall
Xan taking off the paneling to expose the sheetrock...
Michael creating a starting point to get between the sheetrock and the next layer...
Xan peeling away the sheetrock to reveal the wall paper...
Xan peeling away the wallpaper to get to the tongue and groove sheathing...
Keith (a local wood artist who came by and volunteered several hard hours!!! Thanks!!!) attacking the tongue and groove...
Tristan, with the Sawzall, surgically reducing one of the walls into manageable sections... this old wood is very dense and heavy...
Revealing the brick that was hiding underneath all of those layers...
We've been saving little samples of some of the different layers that we've found.These are the wall papers from different eras and a post card from 1941 that I found behind one of the mantels.
In our 3400 square foot space there are 12,740 square feet of these layered surfaces to undo...
Xan was intrigued the for the first 100 square feet or so and one of the first rules of the construction world is that if you have to do anything over and over again, it stops being cool very quickly!
5 comments:
cool
I love seeing all the different layers of our home's life. She's a keeper, I think!!
So, Xan has learned a very important lesson in construction...how many sq. ft. of fun she will have before it gets tedious.
Was any of the tongue and groove wood reusable? Just curious.
Thanks for sharing the progress with all of us. Isn't it strange that all the decades of wallpapers are basically beige? It's time this venerable old building had some colorful owners! I bet the ghosts of Christmases past are cheering you on. The wedding pictures were fun. How about a photo of the river... xxoo
Bill already found this blog??? How did I not know???
in layers and layers of "out of it"-
P
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