Life in our Living Room

Renovating while raising a family is no easy task. We are finding this especially true in the living room. It is not called a “living” room for nothing. We watch TV together in the evenings. The two youngest kids pretend the entire floor is lava, and they spend a great deal of time navigating the room by never touching the floor. M. practices gymnastics. It is a hub of daily activity. In other words, we live in here a lot, and this is what it looks like right now:

Yikes.

Andy wins an award for solo removal of all of the wallpaper. In a surprising turn of events, there were only two layers of wallpaper on the wall. One layer was clearly original, and the outer layer was probably 60+ years old.  It has taken him two weekends, but the last of the big bits of paper have been removed. Now, it is my turn to hone in on the details. There are little bits of paper around each of the six light fixtures and the woodwork.

The walls are in surprisingly good shape. Despite all of its age-related quirks, we feel fortunate that BHH is in such great overall condition. It is clear to us that all the previous owners did not have work done very often, but when they did, it was done well.


There will be a few small wall repairs necessary, but the bulk of our time will be spent washing, prepping and painting the woodwork.

If you follow us on Instagram, twitter or Facebook, you already know that we had a little “incident” in the living room last week.

My son and I were inside, and we heard a terrible crash downstairs. It was very loud, and it sounded like glass shattering and something heavy falling over. We both ran downstairs. With everything in chaos, it took us a minute to find out the source of the noise.


Part of the living room ceiling actually fell to the floor. It narrowly missed our TV in its temporary location. Fortunately, our dog was outside playing. She spends a lot of her day under that part of the ceiling, looking out the window.

The plaster had been severely cracked for some time. The damage was caused by the expansion, contraction and moisture from our ice dams this winter, and likely from a previous winter or two. The path of the run-off during the winter and subsequent thaw is more clearly illustrated in this exterior photo:

The house is obscured by the pine tree, but the affected interior ceiling is just behind tree. The exterior porch ceiling, which is authentic bead board, is also severely damaged. We’ve put that on the repair list for the future. The list seems to be growing faster than it is shrinking!

In my last post about the guest room, I expressed my desire to learn more about real plaster and the proper restoration of plaster walls. However, this ceiling is far outside my skill set at this time. The entire surface is loose and not salvageable even if we try the frankenwall technique. The rest of that ceiling portion needs to come down. Then, we will still be left with rotten lathe. In the interest of time and money, we are going to replace that section with modern drywall for now. It pains me to do it, but it is the best solution at this stage of our renovation. Down the road, we can always take the drywall out and replace it with authentic plaster. In the scheme of things, it is a very small fraction of authenticity lost.

We are feeling the time crunch a bit. Part of our new furniture has arrived, and it is currently being stored in the warehouse. The rest should be here in two to three weeks. The reality is that we will not be ready at that time either, but we will do our best.

I will end today’s post with a few more photos of the room as it is today. Eek!