And The Walls Came Tumbling Down!

So, where to start. At the beginning of our project with HMR Architects we decided to save the 19 Th. century section of our house to save some money. We integrated it quite nicely, I think, into the old and new sections and worked off of the things that we couldn't change such as the floor height and roof line. Weeeeelll…….. Once the plaster and the siding came off and the foundation was exposed it was deemed to be not worth saving as everything was out-of-level, rotted, crumbling, uneven, etc. So now we will rebuild this section saving only a small bit if the foundation and encasing that in some poured concrete. On the plus side there are some very nice hand-hewn beams that we will save and use elsewhere in the house. Oh well, we had good intentions. 

Bye Bye Chimney

Since we will not need the current chimney we decided to take it down. It was quite bulky and when we removed the mantle and fireplace facade we realized it had never been a fireplace but merely to exhaust the furnace, which has just been disconnected, and for a coal stove a long time ago. Lets hope for lots of warm days.

It wasn't that hard to get down!

The easiest way to get the bricks down was to cut a hole in the wall and throw them out!

Demolition!

Demolition of the 1800's section of the house is underway and there are lots of surprises. 

This was the main bathroom and a bedroom.

 It's difficult to see but many of the timbers used in this section were from an old barn and you can see notches and old tennon locations. Almost all the wood had been salvaged as evidenced by multiple layers of paint and old nails!

This room was a living room. To the left is the old fireplace and chimney. We had until recently used this room for storage.

What you see in this picture is remnants of many mice nests! Nice.