Saturday started with some visiting family helping tear down the barn but the weather surprised us and actually started to rain. So, we just moved the demolition inside (can’t pass up good help when it’s here!).
The front room needs the most attention. All twelve other rooms have been painstakingly drywalled, sanded, painted, floored, re-windowed, trimmed, etc and now it’s time for one final room. Before I painted though, we decided to open the area up a bit and get rid of the rundown old “front” door. It went to good use and was actually traded for a pair of springy dwarf Nigerian goats.
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| Waiting while the girls hurried and grabbed a few toys out of their room. |
The whole process really didn’t take all that long. It was just a matter of figuring out where to cut and making sure there were no electrical wires crossing the blade’s path. Then he sawzalled away.
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| Not sure what was so funny but they got the last of the wall sections down in one piece! |
I’m amazed the girls slept for three hours next to the pounding and sawing but there wasn’t much left to do once they roused from their slumber. Evelyn didn’t care much for the saw but plugging her ears is more of a fad at her age–she claps her hands over her ears when she hears a train whistle blow a mile away.
Once the hole was chopped out of the wall, we used a sturdy beam from the barn for decoration and support. It’ll take a bit of hand planing, a lot of sanding and some varnish to bring out the natural beauty of the wood underneath the 100+ years of weathering but it will be worth the effort in the end.
I love that both the dining room and the front room–destined to be a sewing/craft area–are so open. The girls obviously love it too–they keep tearing from one end of the house to the other, shrieking and giggling the entire length.
Tearing down the wall was the last big mess requiring me to tote out muck buckets full of rubble. Though sometimes doing “the last ____” is bittersweet, like enjoying our last summer here, there is nothing even remotely sad about the last mess.
