What Lies Beneath!

On Friday, I ripped off the paneling in the dining room, and marveled at the design some subterranean termites left behind.
I had no idea they were such artists, chewing away at the paper on the sheet rock and then finally leaving!

While the termites are no longer in the house, they definitely left their calling card behind.

In a few weeks we are having new carpeting installed in all the bedrooms, hallway and dining room, which means we need to get a ton of work done before the carpet installers come to replace the god awful gray shag carpet that now covers our floors.

For us to make the ceiling paint seamless throughout the family room, kitchen and hallway, it will be necessary to paint the whole ceiling in one fell swoop.

This means that all the paneling needs to come down in the family room and dining room, and in the kitchen all the upper cabinets need to be removed.

We aren’t gutting the kitchen until next spring, but all the upper cabinets do need to be removed now if we want to paint the ceiling properly.

While Noah was busy taking all the doors off the kitchen cabinets, I was busy chipping off the gross fake bricks that are on the foyer wall.

Noah has been a great help taking care of Simmi when she’s up and about, and then also helping me when we need him.

I’ve given him a laundry list of things to do, and he really has come through for us, making it possible to do as much as we can efficiently.

Pulling the bricks off the wall was a fun and easy project.

It was also highly addictive. We were only going to do part of the wall and come back to it later, but yesterday with each brick removed, we’d  say “oh just one more brick.”

After removing them all, I saw that the integrity of the sheet rock was compromised, crumbling if it was touched.

I opted to cut out all the area that was damaged and replace it with new sheet rock.

I think someone must have pushed something heavy against that wall to crush it.

Here are more pictures of what is currently being done:

The family room had paneling on all three walls. I removed it all today, and the sheet rock underneath is in very good condition.

Next is the dining room before the paneling was removed:

After it was removed:

 

The master bedroom will be finished by tomorrow, and next on the agenda is repairing all the walls that had paneling on them. I’m really glad we took the chance to see exactly what lies beneath all the paneling.