Wallpaper fun

August 30, 2010

So, we've been working on peeling off the wallpaper for the last 2 days. The only wallpaper left in the area that we are trying to finish before we move in is around the moldy window (the one we have the stained glass window for) and in the upstairs hallway. We are almost finished with this area. Again, the upstairs hall literally has 4 layers of wallpaper that are covered with an oil-based paint that is completely gooey/impenetrable with the steamer. It's coming along, just slowly.

Here is the area yesterday:










And here it is today:






















Hopefully, we'll be done tomorrow.

Craig and Jim also finished gutting the 3 closets that were moldy. Here they are now:


Apartment closet


View from the apartment closet.... you can see straight into the yellow bedroom closet



Yellow bedroom closet


Yellow bedroom closet number 2

Nothing too exciting. More to come soon.

Jessica

Bat Signal

August 28, 2010 (I was too tired to post this last night)

Alok is going nuts over the fact that our house is detaching itself from, well, itself. So, he put out his distress signal and a structural engineer responded..... his dad. I'll let Alok tell you about his dad's findings/plan in a later post (I honestly have no clue what is going on with that).


Planning away

After his parents finished the tour, they worked on peeling off wallpaper. Well, his mom peeled and his dad helped hold the steamer. In the meantime, my dad was peeling wallpaper and my mom was doing some destruction.

Here we are, peeling away:




Here is the wallpaper progress in the upstairs hall (the last of the wallpaper):









We made some progress, but still have a lot to go in that area.

Here is the area that my mom was destroying:




There was definitely a window here at one time. We talked about putting in another window (this is above the front door), but the door is so slanted that putting in a straight window would look to weird.

Also, we found a ladder that some elf had dropped off in our yard early that morning. Thanks ;-)

That's all for yesterday. More progress will be posted tonight, as well as the plan for our sinking house.

Jessica

More discoveries

August 27, 2010

I didn't work on the house last night because I had roller derby. Alok worked on tearing out the rest of the basement carpet and my mom worked on carving plaster out of walls. They forgot the camera, so that's about all for yesterday.

I went over to the house today and was very pleasantly surprised by the state of our master bedroom/bath. Here it is now:




















It looks much better without the piles of insulation, etc.

Craig and Jim also started ripping out the other moldy closets in the house (there were 3 others). Here are the before and after shots:




Apartment closet before




After


Yellow closet before




upstairs yellow bedroom closets after (some more of the boards may need to come out)

We are nearly mold free! Well, that may be a complete overstatement, but most of the major areas that we are aware of are gone. They just need to rip out the area around the window that had the massive air conditioner in it.

As we mentioned in previous posts, the cool thing about ripping out the walls is all of the stuff that was found. There is a whole box that we have to go through, but here are the highlights:




Signed by Palmer in 1914






there are a ton of random bottles with stuff in them


box o'stuff






This has a calendar from (I believe) 1880 on the front




Glass baby bottle, fully in tact with a wooden nipple


close up on baby bottle

The hypothesis is that when they cleaned up the attic fire from 1914, they just brushed a lot of the debris into the walls (the sides of the attic go straight down into the walls). It would be interesting to see what else is in those walls (not interesting enough to tear more down).

Through the blog, we've also been discussing how perfect our house is for Halloween. Look at what we discovered written on the basement ceiling:


Alok said that he was worried that he would wipe it off and then come back the next day and it would be back. Hmmmmm..... that could be a good joke/test to see if Alok really reads this blog when he isn't contributing.

As for today, I started peeling off the wallpaper in the upstairs hallway. Most of the upstairs hallway/rooms are blocked off by doors. Since we have 5 pets (yes, 5), we need to finish the walls in the hallway/the floor that is going to be exposed without a door prior to move in. Then, we can ignore the rest of the house once we make sure that it's mold free/not leaking.

Here is the area before:


And after:



That little area took me over 3 hours with a steamer! There is at least 3 layers of wallpaper and then painted wallpaper on these walls. We also don't have the air on in the house because we are trying not to circulate the mold/dust/plaster, etc. (We don't have air upstairs anyway). So, it was literally pretty steamy up there.


Alex (post Benedryl) probably wondering why she's here again

Peters is also almost finished with the gutters. They got them up really quickly and they look great. For some reason I forgot to take a picture of this, but I'll post the after pic when they're done.

Now we're off to the Not so fine arts birthday bash at the State Room.

Jessica