First, the current state of the ceiling at the north end of the addition:
As I mentioned in the last post, jacking up the roof over this section began to go haywire, so we're now going to Plan B. This means a half dropped ceiling like what is over the south end of the kitchen. In the meantime, it was quite neat to see the ceiling opened up to the original construction.
Moving upstairs, here's what will be Charles and I's bedroom:
I made it back to the house for a few hours on Saturday and went to work cleaning baseboards in our bedroom. When I started the baseboards all looked pretty much like this:
After some scrubbing, scraping and sanding, they looked like this:
And then, because I'm impatient, I took a little mineral spirits and rubbed it into the baseboard and a small section of the floor. This should be a pretty accurate representation of what they will look like refinished:
My Uncle J has also been busy in the bedrooms upstairs. Both bedrooms had outlets boxes installed on top of the plaster walls. As you can see below, J has been busy installing these outlets and their associated wiring in the wall rather than on top of it.
And the back bedroom has been in on the actions as well. Remember that knee-wall with the frightening settlement issues? Here's a recent shot of that same wall:
Yes, I know it's still rather frightening. But! Take a look at the pictures below. At left is a beginning close up of the support in the middle of the two doubled up supports. At right is a current close up of that same support. Even with the grainy photo quality it is obvious that the post is going up. It actually is touching the horizontal beam again! (Of course, if I had pictures of the dining room wall below this you could see the cracks and crooked bathroom door that we have now as well - but, I don't have those pictures, so for now we'll just ignore those problems....)
The picture below I think is really neat. I stuck the camera through the posts along the knee wall to get this shot. The stone here was never covered with plaster:
More pictures from the back bedroom. Here's the other knee wall, which Charles gutted on Saturday. Hardly any settling on this wall, thank goodness!
And a closeup of the wallpaper which went half-way up the ceiling. It's about 1920's I've been told. Well, it *was* about 1920's. Charles finished gutting the room (ceiling and all) on Sunday so this wallpaper is no more:
Just a couple more pictures to wrap this up. First, here's back in the parlor where we took out the closet. This will be drywalled over, but for now every time I walk by I have to stop and marvel at the stone construction.
And - our contractor called us today to let us know our windows are in. So we shouldn't have anything like this to look at for too much longer:
If we can all stay healthy, it just might be a kind of Merry Christmas after all!
If we can all stay healthy, it just might be a kind of Merry Christmas after all!
I've just read all the blogs and there is no mention of the Einsel House and how you acquired it. I was so downhearted about Old Winchester.
ReplyDeleteIf that bank has a Board of Directors, I'd make sure they knew about the higher offer. And, from what you said about the couple ..... have any of their other properties had similar insurance claims . . . oh my, my mind just goes legal!!!
Okay, where do I read about the Einsel House?
We purchased the Einsel House at sheriff's sale in August of this year, and closing was in October. If you go back in the blog archives to the month of September there are several posts that relive the sheriff sale experience. We also had some complications after the sale, and there are more posts describing those as well.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Old Winchester, I don't know if they have had any other suspicious insurance claims. I do know that the Old Win property was investigated, but they could not prove the fire was set on purpose. What still upsets me is that anyone can buy a property (and pay cash) while they have another property in foreclosure procedings.