Tearing down the Library

The start of a new month is upon us and winter here is still in full swing with no absolute vision of warmer thermometers in sight.  So while I am prevented from working outside, I must persevere and go on with some interior work.  I had planned to be orderly in the progress and had the thought that I would finish the vestibule, foyer and upper landing.  I decided however, to do more demo this weekend.  My favorite part about demo is that it doesn't cost anything to do and gives you a good work out.  So onto gutting the library. The first thing that needed to come out was the ceiling.  It has been dropped down about 6 inches and had a popcorn ceiling on it.  I not only hated it but it made the room feel small and dingy.  So this was my first task was to destroy the ceiling.  It actually came down fairly easy.  For some reason (probably for adding plugs in the room) they had simply framed in a new lower ceiling and put a heck of a lot of insulation in the ceiling.  I suspect they did this because the room was so cold.  Clearly whomever did this didn't realize that it was so cold because there was a fair amount of rot in the corner boards of the exterior of the house where the internal gutters used to be.  I can actually see daylight in parts of this wall which is not good news when your high temp of the day only reaches -4, yes that's right the HIGH was negative 4 degrees.  Anyways under the ugly ceiling was an interesting textured ceiling, probably from the 30s or 40s.  This secondary ceiling will have to go too but right now I was happy to get the first ceiling down.

The missing window on the right with half the ceiling down.

I also knew that there was a window hidden in the wall that had been closed up.  You can see if from the outside of the house but no hint of it inside.  This window may have been taken out because it was old and drafty and frankly with your neighbor's house being only 3 ft 4 inches from your house, who would want a window that close? Well I do! This missing window does add light to these rooms and also allows air to come in on those hot summer days.  So behind the drywall on that wall I found the hole of the missing window.  Now to order the window and put it in ! Although I think the install will have to wait just a little bit longer until it gets warmed up.

After taking the ceiling down, I worked a bit on the walls.  There was one wall I simply thought was only drywall from the sound of it.  So I started working on that wall.  Thing was that it wasn't just drywall, but they had put drywall over the old plaster. I HATE multiple layers of trash!!!! So I kept working and saw a tiny hint of old wallpaper.  To my surprise, much of the old wallpaper on the this wall was intact behind the drywall.  They simply put it over on top.  Here is what I found, I'm guessing from the 30s or 40s.

I wish I could describe this wallpaper to you because the top border and all the silver parts on the mail wall are luminescent with a wonderful sheen when the light hits it.  I'm sure gave some great color and highlights when light hit these walls.  I couldn't believe it was so well intact.  If you've noticed from my other posts, this house was FULL of flower wallpaper.  I like the pattern I really do, but couldn't live in a house where every room had big bouquets of luminescent flowers.

While removing some old trim I actually found pieces of even older wallpaper.  I'm thinking from the 20s or early 30s.  I couldn't figure out why it was behind some trim however.  Perhaps it was installed after the house was duplexed and before they put some old trim back up in the house.  It will remain a mystery, but I thought the paper was rather pretty too and also had that sheen to it.

So I have made a good mess with still more mess to go.  I thought I would share a few finds and who knows what will be behind these old walls next!



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