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Small progress, but progress

The last couple of days have been full of house-fixing activity, but again, there still doesn't seem to be a whole lot to show for the work. 

The living room walls are now re-textured (thankfully, as that was a multi-day chore to finish one room - ugh - not looking forward to future room wall texturing, but hopefully, it'll be worth the work in the end). One of the windows in the living room is now a door, which is pretty exciting because it made no sense for it not to be a door as there is a deck right outside and we would've had to go through the entire house, down a flight a stairs, around the entire backyard, and then up another set of stairs to use it. Why this hadn't been done in the past is beyond me, but we're pretty excited that it will provide easy access, as the deck is pretty large (though in need of a fair amount of repair/maintenance at the moment). This morning it was 34F degrees, so it's not something that will likely get used on these chilly mornings until we can unpack some cooler-weather clothing, but it's fantastic to see things taking shape.

Lapboard under the Beaverboard and additional layers of finish over the years.

As we were tearing into the wall, we got to take a better look at what is actually under the walls, which was kind of fun. From what we can see, there was the initial lapboard that was used as part of the structure and the original owners must have then wallpapered over it, as what we found was really old and truly fabric more so than paper that would have been used any time in the somewhat modern era.

The wallpaper over the lapboard -- actually in decent shape (though faded), given the reality that it's probably 85+ years old.

The wallpaper must've been quite pretty in its original form. It's hard to see in the photos but it contains some red and almost a turquoise color. Over the wallpaper was the Beaverboard that was installed at some point (that I initially thought was asbestos drywall). We've discovered that this was used as both sound insulation and for heat insulation as well. 

The slider in the midst of being installed.

Ultimately, the slider got installed, which was a good thing, so as to not have a giant hole in the side of the house. There's still work to be done involving little adjustments, trim, etc, but at least the door is in, so we'll take that as a win.

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  1. SamSeptember 2, 2021 at 12:30 PM

    Some things I didn't know: The house is 3 layers on the outside, Metal siding (with fiber board insulation inside of it), then the original cedar siding, then 7 inch "shiplap". This is an accoutrement to the interior, which is "beaverboard", wall "paper", and then 7 inch shiplap. It's literally an 86 year old 7 layer cookie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. TrudeeSeptember 4, 2021 at 9:40 AM

    I love the door!

    ReplyDelete

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