After re-assessing the hidden staircase, we realized a few things. First, it was definitely not original. It was likely put up by the Brown's at some point when they split the house. Secondly, there was no way to make it work. It would either end in the middle of a hallway or the middle of a usable room. So, Alok started the destruction. (BTW, don't mind the hazy pictures. It's because of the massive amounts of dust).
This is the view from the foyer. You are looking through the small bathroom, through where the staircase was and into the apartment.
Here is what the basement hallway area looked like yesterday:
And here it is today:
View from the small hallway downstairs to the basement.... the apartment is straight ahead
The small bathroom is to your left, the apartment is straight ahead (that is the closet door opening) and the apartment is also to the right
Here is the ceiling area of this hallway yesterday:
And now today:
Alok said that the staircase was BARELY hooked on. It's also probably not a bad thing to take that down for that reason as well.
Here is another pic of yesterday (the apartment area, Alok is standing in the closet):
And the same area today:
Here is the view from the small bathroom, as of yesterday:
And now today:
Oh, goodbye stairs:
Alok tearing things up
King of the trash mountain.
Here is the video tour:
That's all for now. And I think that's enough for now!!
Alok has been hard at work with the continued destruction of the first floor. Here is the progress:
The foyer... notice that you can now see directly into what was the small bathroom
The small bathroom under the stairs. Bye-Bye Yazoo. Alok had to tear out 4 layers of flooring and had to smash Yazoo to get it out. The floors were built around it.
RIP Yazoo
The bathroom closet... under the stairs
A random bottle from the bathroom
Alok noticed that the floor joists that hold up the majority of the first floor are being held up by this little 1 inch thick board that is now cracked. That's not good.
Alok checking out the construction
Another close up on that board
The apartment is now gutted too
The door straight ahead is the one that holds the stairs... now you can see through the bathroom into the dining room
The apartment... this is the bedroom/family room area
He uncovered the other side of the fireplace that is in the living room area. We're hoping that we can find some sort of double-sided insert so we can have a double-sided fireplace here.
The bathroom sink
The brick/the width of the paneling that is in the front parlor
Alok said that you can see the old wall straight ahead (the white part) and how many inches the paneling is over it. He's debating tearing down that paneling while we're at it. This is the door from the foyer that used to lead into the front parlor. We're going to open it up.
Alok hard at work today carrying the molding that we need to scrape to the basement
The current back of the house
Notice those lovely icicles.
We also received our second heating bill, which is comparable to the first. That's not so bad given that we have a huge house with only one heater and no insulation. We now have no working pipes (the water is turned off), so we decided to turn off the heat to save a bit on that.
With the lack of me doing anything at the house, this blog has become a ghost town. I am out of the house gutting business as long as the plaster dust is flying. Speaking of ghosts though, Alok swears one open and closed a door last night when he was working alone. He decided to peace out of there pretty quickly. Alok has been doing a great job of tearing down the house, but not such a great job at blogging. Hopefully this extra long blog (and 6 month, well 6 month and 8 day review) will make up for it. A lot has happened!
Like last month, I also tried to incorporate pics from all the previous months so you could see the progress, rather than just having the beginning and now. Apparently, I didn't start charting the progress in this fashion until month 4, so we're skipping a few. Here we go:
Front of the house (Some of these have our new roof... I apparently didn't get a complete before on some of them)
The beginning: 3 months: 4 months: 5 months: OK, it was too dusty to enter.... so imagine the same looking parlor with a ton of dust for the next few 6 months:
The beginning: 3 months: 4 months: 5 months: 6 months:
The beginning: 1 month: 3 months: 4 months: 5 months: 6 months: ------------------------------------------------------------- Almost then (we didn't have a picture from before of this area, but this is right when we started in the apartment; the closet on the left is the one that contains the staircase): 3 months: Nada 4 months: 5 months: 6 months: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bathroom under the stairs
The beginning:
3 months: 4 months: 5 months: 6 months:
Random hall to basement/apartment/foyer (skipped before):
