Earlier this week, Wesley and I decided that we would host Christmas at the Seavy House this year. We have been quite busy on renovations and we wanted to showcase them to our family. In this same vein, we finally have a full-fledged kitchen (with a stove and a dishwasher), wow!
Now, just 21 days until Christmas, we have decided to gut the dining room. Yes, 21 days, how will this even be possible? I’m not sure myself, we are determined to finish it.
When I purchased the house, the dining room windows were shattered and broken to pieces. There was trash strewn throughout the room and it looked like a crime scene. See below.
Whether it was the nasty green carpet that squished when you stepped because it was soaked with water or the cinderblocks that held the carpet down (not sure what other purpose they might have served), the house was a mess. After some TLC (dumpsters, scraping, hauling, new electric, new furnace, roof repairs, etc.), we cleaned out the room, and hired a Amishman in New Wilmington, Pa. to fix some of our broken windows.
When we started to scrape the walls, I discovered the remnants of the horsehair plaster. While I was scraping, there was something sticking out and my scraper grabbed it and it fell to the floor with a sound that wasn’t plaster–it was a corn kernel!
As we began to scrape the walls, there were obvious areas that suffered from the water damage that remained from the missing window and the squishy green carpet. It was most notable on the exterior walls. Last year, well–the night before our annual holiday party to showcase the house’s progress, I decided I wanted to paint, despite Wesley and my mother telling me that I was crazy. That said, I was determined that we needed to do it! We scraped the entire West wall in the Dining Room and chose a darker green color for the walls to test out what the dark color would look against the woodwork. Some complimented it, others would have recommended a different color, but it was finally putting some paint on the walls (to be honest, this was the first paint we had ever placed on the walls in the house!). As of yesterday, this is what it looked like.
In the photo, you can see above the outlet that we were able to do some patchwork last year on the water damage, but the wall was still pliable when you pushed or leaned on it. This was mostly due to the plaster removing itself from the lathe caused by the water damage. Soooo… 22 days before Christmas, we decided to remove the plaster and insulate the exterior wall. This is what it looked like this afternoon.
Tonight, we took off the remaining portions of the lathe and plaster in order to insulate. After some going back and forth about a vapor barrier and insulation, we had discovered the tar paper was peeking through the exterior diagonal boards. We ended the night with one whole area of insulation installed and above the window…
Now, it goes without saying that as we pull away more and more pieces from the wall, we notice odds and ends that need repairs, fixes, etc. We are able to make these repairs inch by inch as we see them or note them for “another time” and move on if we can. But for now, 21 days until Christmas, here’s our dining room.
