Moving Right Along,,,,, The Hall Way!!!!!!

Finally, we've gotten to the hall way.  By choice this was to be our last inside project because the hall way was the 26' storage room that stored everything in.  Literally, golf clubs, pictures, tables, chairs, you name it and it was there.  The hall way was about 26' long, approximately 5' wide and very dark when the Sun Room door was closed.  It was so dark and depressing we actually never took a picture of it in all its glory.

Just so you know, in the older days homes were built with basically the sleeping rooms and bath room (if one was actually inside the home) and often the parlor  were built separately from the cooking side of the house.  This house was similar but not totally constructed that way.  We have what appears to be two front doors side by side.  One enters the living room, the other enters a bed room.  The living room, dining room and kitchen are on one side of the house and two bedrooms, the sleeping room and the bath room is on the other side of the house.  Both sides are connected with a long hallway down the middle of the house.

Anyway, we've completed the hallway and it has just opened up the entire house just as we expected.   We had to repair the ceiling, paint the "pond green" paneling, and install our flooring.  It was worth every minute of labor and effort.  .

A view from the bathroom area looking back towards the sun room shows off the value add of the hallway.

Looking back from the sun room towards the bathroom and master bedroom is equally appealing.

 This view is from the master bedroom looking into the hallway.  The door on the right is from the dining room.  We mentioned earlier that we were moving the washer and dryer to the mud room and you can see why now.  We will be building another closet where the washer and dryer are here and gain a lot of storage space while removing the laundry equipment from view.

Finally a view from the bathroom into the hallway and dining room really ties all of this house together.

We are excited, this is the final major interior project for the remodel.  Its taken 16 months of a lot of work and planning.  While we have more to do, the end IS in sight.  We'll be doing final touch up projects on the interior but boy are we blessed to have this much done.

Thanks Donald and Kay and everybody else that's helped.

Won't be long till we have the "Open House" and we really look forward to that.

Mud Room Make Over

This old house has everything you can imagine.  The entrance to the back of the house is through what once was a porch and eventually got enclosed.  The area was simply an entry where you could take off your boots, coats, caps and store your guns.  We have always called it a "Mud Room" and it is one of the best part of the house as far as we're concerned.  You don't have to track mud, chicken *&%$$, snow or bugs into the house by coming in back here.

The room was not insulated and was just pine planks with a plank floor due to its evolvement and construction.  So, we decided to re-cover withe walls with pine planks.  The wood was milled from trees that had fallen on the farm for several years.  When the fellow came with his sawmill Donald had it cut to 1'X8"X16" boards.  We had to stack the boards in the barn with "slats" between the layers of boards in order to let the wood "air dry".  The drying took about 2 to 2 1/2 months but the wood turned out great.

We then planed each board, cut it to dimension and installed the planks to create a true plank paneling appearance.   By the way, we also hung "15# tar paper" on the walls before we installed the planks for additional insulation.  The tar paper was also put down covering the floor before the sub floor plywood was laid. Below is the original appearance of the room and some of the steps we took along the way.

The original room was kind of a mess as you can see 

We used this for storage but the appearance needed some improvements.

The wood just totally changed the appearance of this room and we haven't even treated the wood yet.  We were able to move the wiring and conceal the outlets and make the room totally acceptable in looks.

We will eventually move our washer and dryer to this wall and make more room in our hall way that we are working as we speak.  This will allows us to build another closet in the hall and get the washer and dryer back where it is out of site where it should be.

We also were able to build a closet in this mud room (below).  With this close and the one we'll gain in the hallway, we'll have enough closet space for storing all our "junk".   (Just what we need)

One of the things we marvel at and really enjoy is that this wood was just a fallen tree several months ago.  This wood was cut, (fell) milled, planed, fit and installed all from something a lot of people just burn or throw away.  Amazing,,,,,

The hallway is next so, stay tuned......