Never going to live here, never going to live here

January 10, 2011

I was out of the town for the majority of the last week for an autism conference, so I apologize for the delay in posting. Alok has been doing the majority (OK, all) of the work on the house, so I guess he can get a pass for not posting :-)

Here's the update: We are officially in the middle of a gut rehab. That may seem obvious to most of you, but I think we are now officially accepting the state of our horrible money pit. Today, Alok and I met to decide which wall are coming down (almost all of them on the first floor) and which ones are staying (about 3 walls downstairs and the upstairs hallway).

In the meantime, Alok has been working on tearing down many of the other walls. Here's how it looks now:

Foyer ceiling is now down


Close-up


Dining room coming down... Those are the lovely pocket doors


Close up on the mustard painted, butternut wood doors


Stripped dining room wall.... the wall that took about a zillion hours to scrape


Honeycomb that was under the window in the above picture


Left over honeycomb on the wall


Close up on the pipes to the upstairs bathroom, which they cut through a floor joist (completely through). That was a great move.


Something really weird in the ceiling


Dining room ceiling


All these walls seen here are coming down


Chicago Daily Tribune from March 8, 1941 that was in the ceiling

We also took some time to plan out our bathrooms, which wasn't too exciting since the plumbing can't be changed a whole lot due to the lovely cutting through wood. We attempted to go into the attic to see if we may want to add a bathroom up there, but Alok kept saying there are several bats up there. I ignored him and started up the stairs, and look at what I saw:


Look in the right corner by the board in the middle. I think we should name the only living thing that can actually survive in the current Hampshire House. Maybe Tom Hanks?

Needless to say, we didn't make it up stairs.

More destruction to come soon.

Jessica