Well, we’re at it again in my soon-to-be-office.  I can’t remember when we did this work, exactly. Years ago. I could ask the kid, who can tell you what he had for lunch four years ago on the second Tuesday in March. But it’s not important. I’m typing this essay in this office, and lunch is in 1/2 hour, so we’ll roll with that.

We’re wearing what used to be called: nuisance dust masks. Everyone seems to associate magical powers with masks these days, so they don’t call them that anymore, I gather. Masks are only good for forestalling sneezing fits from gypsum dust until lunchtime. There’s bound to be some nasty stuff in any wall we demolish, so we like to skip the demolition snuff if we can.

I’m showing the kid how to do it. I use a hammer to punch holes in the drywall, in a row, until I discover the wood studs. Then I punch holes vertically. It goes very fast, and doesn’t make much of a mess. When you’ve outlined a big section, you can pull it out whole with a little tugging. Demolition is poorly understood, mostly because of the teevee. You’re supposed to disassemble things in an orderly fashion, not stick your foot through them.

As you can glimpse in the next photo, we’re entering a Whole New World.

It’s a magical land of rainbows and clouds and pots of gold and unicorn road apples. It’s especially magic, because it’s painted on the inside of the wall cavity. Apparently, mice did it. I had no idea the little fellers had this kind of talent. And it must have been deuced difficult to paint all this while wearing a tiny miner’s helmet on their little rodent head. All in all, a noble effort.

There’s something peevish for me on display here, too. Look at the wall studs. Whoever built this Great Wall of Blarney was flummoxed by the nine-foot ceilings. You can buy ten-foot 2x4s, but that’s not in their construction arsenal, I assume, so they lapped short studs and kept going. Most every time I’ve tried to drive a fastener into any surface that isn’t original equipment in this house, I miss anything structural, and start swearing. Now I know why. You can use a stud finder on drywall walls like these, and I have. However, if the studs skip around like this, you’re likely to come a cropper looking for it with a screw. They’re spaced catch-as-catch-can, too, instead of 16″ on center, and not plumb, either, which turns the rainbows and pot of gold into an Easter Egg Hunt for studs.

OK, so we’re back to square one here. We brought the demolished frescoed drywall to the dump, where they’re probably still scratching their heads over us. We’ve revealed the back of the bifold door that served the closet we just removed. Interestingly, that doorway was always there.

It’s hard to know exactly what each of the first floor rooms was used for back when they built this place. In 1901, house plans just listed parlor after parlor downstairs, and chamber after chamber upstairs. But there was a ghost on the floor of an old doorframe, placed there long before anyone conjured the idea for this execrable bifold rainbow closet arrangement. It’s likely that this room was a sitting room for the bedroom beyond, although I doubt that was always a bedroom. It might have been just another parlor-parlor-parlor. This room might have had an upright piano against the big, blank wall on the right. Lots of houses were designed around pianos like that. It could have been a summer sleeping room. It’s cool and breezy in there with all the windows open. Come to think of it, it’s cool and breezy in there with the windows closed, too. In any case, we don’t need that doorway, but we could use some wall space on both sides.

We used the longest of the short studs we salvaged to fill in the hole. We added plugs all around the room, and fished the cable/internet line in there, too. If you scroll back two images, you can see a very dangerous outlet in the baseboard. There were very few outlets in this house originally, usually just one per room, and a single dangling light fixture in the middle of each ceiling. They were mostly replaced with ridiculous ceiling fans by the former owners. The plug and the overhead lights were still on the original knob and tube wiring, and as you can see from the mildewed wall, roof leaks had drenched the stud bay over and over. I’m surprised no one got the Old Sparky treatment from them. We disconnected all the knob and tube circuits, and wired the room with Romex sheathed cable.

If you look at the last picture, you can see the sash pocket that reader Blackwing mentioned in the comments after Kudzu, Carter, and Other Calamities. I’ve removed the access panel to get at the iron sash weights. The sash cords had broken long ago, and the weights rocketed to the bottom of the sash pocket. With all the interior oak trim removed, I can de-rhombus the frame. I went outside and removed the window trim on the top and the high (right-hand) side, and cut all the nails that held the window in place. I left the low side attached. I cut off the horn on the right-hand side(the bottom part of the window frame that sits on the rough sill), and the frame dropped into alignment with just a little coaxing from a pry bar. I used a carpenter’s square to make sure the frame was square, and then nailed everything back in place.

We put new sash cords from the weights to the sashes. They travel over pulleys that we lubricated to get it back into fighting shape. The window sash has a slot for the cord, ending in a round pocket where the knotted end of the sash cord resides. It’s a simple but effective way to counterbalance the weight of the window sashes.

As you can see from the closeup, over the years, everyone had slopped paint all over the edges of the trim. We ended up (carefully) removing all the oak trim in the room, and stripping off the paint on the workbench in the basement, and refinishing it before re-installing it. It was much easier than working on it in place. Also, plaster walls of this vintage weren’t really paint-ready. It was assumed that the walls would be wallpapered, so the plaster is a little grainy. We can skim over the old plaster as necessary, and bring the smoothness and paint behind the restored trim, to get a sharper edge.

I guess I’ll have to fix the ceiling, too. I hate when the carpenter ants walk back and forth, and bits of insulation rain down on my head while I’m typing. I’m kind of fussy that way.

[To be continued. Feel free to leave a comment, hit the tip jar, buy a book, or tell a friend about Sippican Cottage!]