What Were We Thinking....

Sometimes, I really wonder, what were we thinking...as in, what were we thinking when we bought this house? Or, what were we thinking to start this project? Case in point....

In our last post, I showed the panel wall that we opened. Remember this?

In that post, I forgot to mention that we plan on replacing the "wonderful" outdoor support beams with a reproduction of the built-in bookcases that someone chose to remove. We found an example to give to our wonderful Amish wood crafter from in the Antique Home site. Here is a the picture for you.

But I digress...back to the question of the day. One would think that we would stop with just the plywood wall, but of course not. The deconstruction continued...to the ceilings. This time, though, I wised up and made sure to improvise some drop cloths to protect the furniture from the dust - especially my 1911 upright grand piano.

Taking down the first ceiling was not bad at all and we were pleasantly surprised to see how clean it was up there. Of course, we did discover a few unanticipated things too.

A pipe runs from the outside wall of the house to the center of the room, and has old wires still in it. It is my educated guess that this pipe originally held gas for gas lights, but was then converted to knob and tube electricity at some point and then replaced finally with modern electric lines.

Here is a picture of the rest of the pipe. As you can see from this photo and the ones following, the ceiling looks really clean.

I am sure you are wondering what we are planning on doing? Well, we decided that we really like the extra seven, yes 7 inches of height that this gives the room. And, since we have no idea how any of the rooms were originally finished, but we do know that the house was built as a showplace, we have decided to go all out and really dress it up...with finished beamed ceilings.

Something along the lines of the ceiling above. We have decided to also go for this look in the dining room. We thought that this would help expand both spaces and make them feel larger and more formal. It was while starting the ceiling in the dining room that we found stuff that was not as clean or appealing.

Things like swarming nests of creepy crawling lady bugs. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily have an issue with lady bugs. They are great for my garden. However, I detest little critters of any kind (excluding children :-) of course) anywhere in my house! It just gives me the creeps. But that was nothing compared to the other "evidence" we found.

We have had so much trouble with bats in the house this past summer. If my memory serves me correctly, we were upwards of seven of them to-date. Well, we now believe that they have been somehow living in our ceiling! There was plenty of evidence since we seem to have excavated their "outhouse"!

All over the drop cloth that we used to cover the computer desk and equipment. (Uhhh, to think that this was above me each and every day as I worked!)

The insulation was absolutely coated with their excrement. I refused to touch the stuff to begin with due to the fiberglass fibers, but I really draw the line at poop!

Unfortunately, we were caught off guards and were not expecting this at all, so a bunch ended up on the floor. We cleaned it all up, but then had to stop. We had run out of garbage bags to contain it all and did not want to remove any more insulation and have it laying around. Especially with a baby that is in to everything these days!

 

Our final disgusting discovery was this dehydrated baby mouse. Fortunately, my husband saw it before it landed on me, the kids or the floor! We were able to divert this little critter right into a bag and out the door.

We are frustrated and discouraged for many reasons. Was buying this house the right decision? We feel that in part, we were misled by the quality of the "remodeling" work done. We were told that all the rooms had been completely gutted, insulated, etc. Well, it appears that the above statement is only partially true at best. And what work was done was of such inferior quality that we don't think we can trust any of it. Plywood walls? Really?

At least I can be thankful that our children are learning a lot of valuable skills - like using a hammer, safety glasses, and how to safely climb a ladder!

I can only pray that they will look back on their childhood home with fun and fond memories. Hopefully, they will also learn a lot along the way. Especially what NOT to do!