Basement Stairs!

And the treads are down. This staircase is far too steep, however, and will have to be rebuilt later.

The carriage for the basement stairs is built and the closet floor removed.

Keepin' on keepin' on...

Still trying to keep that Welcome Mat looking nice.

And Mom's still smiling at breaktime.

But there's still a lovely view from the front porch!

And I'm still scraping that wallpaper!

The new support is in place and the beam is working beautifully.

And the wall is gone!

Kitchen Wall Removal

Craig cut out the old termite-eaten floor joist in order to replace it with something better.

Before the wall can be removed, a support must be put in below.

Another view of the beam in the kitchen.

Craig and Dad glue up a beam with Gorilla Glue to help support the upstairs floor so we can enlarge the kitchen.

Debris

Debris from the kitchen fireplace to be taken to the dump.

Tearing Out with Help and New Construction At Last!

Dad takes a break to watch Jake work and think things over.

The first new construction! Woo hoo! Which very few people will ever see after everything's all finished.

A support wall has to be built to carry the weight of the floor so that the closet floor under the stairs can be removed.

Dad and Craig work in the basement to put in a new access under the stairs in the living room.

A friend of Jake's chips off plaster in the dining room.

Some friends of Jake's came to help us take the plaster off the brick in the dining room.

Jake came and helped us finish tearing down the kitchen ceiling.

We also discovered that the living room fireplace was...well...a little odd looking under all that plaster. And we just thought we'd go back to bare bricks. Guess again!

More Destruction

A long day of wallpaper scraping left me rather tired.

When we finished taking out the basement stairs and tiny storage room walls, we found this drain which was used to drain the upstairs kitchen. Definitely not sufficient. Yep. Plumbing will definitely be a priority.

And now the kitchen chimney is gone.

Why Wallpaper is Evil and our Kitchen is Hellacious!

And another view

We then began tearing out the kitchen some more so we could enlarge the space.

This paper is really pretty. It was impossible to save, however.

I finally got down to the first layer of wallpaper.

Craig thought he'd help me with the wallpaper removal in the upstairs bedroom.

Scariness Begins

Also, the basement stairs had to be removed so we could enlarge the kitchen.

When Craig tore down the chimney that went through the kitchen, the back of the tub was revealed. Okay, so there's some plumbing work to do.

Radiators

After 30 minutes, that's all they were able to smash. But it worked better than cutting it up, and was definitely better than trying to move them in one piece.

Craig gets in on the action.

Dad takes a swing with the sledgehammer.

They try cutting it up with a Sawzall. No go.

Gearing up for destruction.

Craig and Dad tried to figure out how to remove the old radiators. First they tried moving it. No way. Too heavy.

Master Bedroom Enlargement

A view of the debris from the tearout. And I thought this was as bad as it would get. Wrong!!!

Dad and Craig and I talked about what to do with the space. Measuring and remeasuring. Reviewing the situation.

Next, we tore out a wall between two of the upstairs bedrooms in order to create one big Master Bedroom. Eeek!

They did WHAT!!???

Craig removed the windowseat and revealed...a freaky radiator which is holding up part of the wall! What were they thinking?

My end of day progress with the wallpaper. Hey! It was my first day of it. Gimme a break!

We also tore down the ceiling of the front porch so we could get a good view of the water damage. There's a lot. The whole porch roof will need replacing.