Happy New Year to all!
We’re back from our holiday travels and rest, and we couldn’t wait to see what happened while we were away. What happened is the guys went to town on the sheetrock and we have what looks like will be some beautiful new walls (and ceilings) all over the place.
It’s hard to get a good view of the new mudroom/bathroom walls because there’s not that much room to back up and take a picture before you hit the door, but here’s what the angled wall of mudroom and bathroom looks like, from just inside the front door:
In that picture, you can see the doorway to the bathroom, and you can see the new sheetrock between the ceiling beams in the entry way. They did a beautiful job covering all the new plumbing installed in the ceiling for the upstairs bathroom (which is just above the downstairs bathroom, handily enough).
Upstairs, the new bedroom (in the ell) is completely sheetrocked, and mostly taped. When they’re finished with this room and the others, the next step will be a coating of plaster on all of the new walls.
Between the minor cracks from the house move and the water damage from drenching October rains (before the roof was put back on), many of the upstairs walls and ceilings were somewhat damaged. As of today, most of that damage is repaired with new sheetrock (which will also be covered with plaster). At it happens, these repairs also fix some of the old plaster that was soft or cracked. Although we love the old plaster, the new walls are going to look much better.
Here’s how the repairs look in the guestroom:
and in our old bedroom (Hyla’s new room):
I would show you how beautiful the upstairs hallway walls and ceiling look, too, but I just couldn’t get a good angle on it for a photo. Trust me. They look much better.
The real magic, though, is downstairs in the kitchen where we had those rotted beams. Between the new (old) beams, the new structural work, and the sheetrock, you can hardly tell that anything was the matter; things are looking so cleaned up and smooth.
Here’s the new ceiling at the entry to the addition:
In that picture, you can see the new “dropped” ceiling in the kitchen in the left side of the picture. It drops all of about 3 inches below the new beam. Could it look better? I don’t think so.
Here’s a picture of the entire dropped ceiling in the kitchen:
That’s the extent of it. Looks beautiful to me.
The dropped ceiling will be over the refrigerator (which will be up against the small wall on the right side of this picture), the wall oven, and some countertop. I wonder if anyone would even notice the change in the ceiling unless we pointed it out to them?
As you can see from this view of the kitchen (taken from the front wall of the house, in what used to be the living room/woodstove room), the entire floor of the kitchen has been taken up:
They floor needed to be replaced here anyway because of the mix of floor materials and levels in this area (remember, it used to be part kitchen, part bathroom, and party pantry, all with different floors), so they’ve apparently decided to rip up everything, strengthen the supports, and shim it while they’re at it. A level floor in the kitchen? Imagine that.
The new flooring in this room will be pine planks that somewhat match the old floor, but not completely. That’s fine with us since the old floor is pretty much a patchwork of different woods and colors (and directions) anyway. The new floor in the kitchen will extend into the ell, so we’ll at least have that much consistency.
Finally, in the basement, “Hyla’s Story in a Nutshell” got the sheetrock treatment, too:
While they were at it, the guys were kind enough to make a little framed doorway for her and install an outlet inside it so we can give her some light. Hyla’s already mentally decorating, in pink, of course.
Grongar 