Week Two of the Remodel

 There is a bathroom at the top of the stairs that has the coolest sink.  The rest of the bathroom was not so cool.  The shower head was in the middle of the shower and hit you in the head, the shower was about 24 inches wide and deep.  I forgot to measure it.  The toilet area was not much wider.

 You can see the weird way we used PVC pipe to try and make the shower head be usable.  After all the work we did the pipe would not drain, so we still couldn't use the shower for guests.  The cold water was the only one that worked in the sink as the hot water would not go off.

 The sink is really neat so we will be saving it to use when we rebuild the bathroom.  We will build a vanity around it.  I love the handles, the pull/stop and the faucet.  I am saving the mirror for now but I don't know if we will use it.  The glass and the shelves are in pretty rough shape. 

 This was the back of the bathroom from the attic.  The wall board was used after lathe and plaster and before sheetrock was used.  The holes in it are used to hold the plaster on the other side.  It is interesting to see how things have changed in construction over the years. 

 All that is left now are the water pipes and some wires.  We will replace the door with double French Doors when we finish the attic and make it into a family room.  We will put in a new bathroom after we get the downstairs done.  So this is the before and during pictures.  Hope that in the the near future we will have some after pictures.

Days 4 and 5

 This wallpaper is on the bottom of the wall, as you can see from the two pictures there are two different wallpapers.  I wonder who used this room.  If walls could talk, what a story they could tell.

 This was a very exciting find in the dining room.  In the following pictures you can see what it looks like. 

 These two pictures show the side view and part of the front of the fireplace.  It is shaped like a triangle.  We will leave the back side uncovered.  After it is cleaned up it will look amazing.  I had Joe stand in the doorway so you can get a feel of how tall the doorways are and the height of the ceilings.

 The new living room without the true 2x4's.  We still have the supporting 2x4's to remove.  We are waiting for the structural engineer to come by.  Will also see what to do about doing more earthquake proofing.  There is a cable running about a foot down from the ceiling in the middle of the living room and at the far wall.  This will be a wonderful large living room.

 The front windows in the dining room.  The above is with the wall still in place.  And the below with it removed.  The ceilings were lowered in 1941 as we found on page of a old newspaper dated Oct 1941.

 Wonderful pipes and huge holes cut in the wall going to the kitchen from the dining room.  These can easily be removed.

 The old knob and tube wiring.  Still being used--for a few more days or weeks then good bye.  The wires are just laying on the floor of the attic.  Very scary.

 Just one of the huge piles of old ceiling.  We have filled one dumpster and have started on the second one.

Old wall paper.

Day Three

 This is the view from the front door.  More of the wall on each side of the stairs will be coming out.  Will be so grand looking compared to before.

 This is quiet disappointing.  No ceiling medallion.  But still very impressive.

 The old wallpaper.  The solid wallpaper goes up about 18 inches on the wall and onto the ceiling.

 These two pictures show the room from different ends.  We were going to have it be two room, one a small office and the front would be the living room.  After seeing the two rooms opened up we both decided we like the idea of one large room.  The door at the end of the above room will be moved to the right side of the picture. 

 Fun wall paper from long ago.

The big disappointment, only one ceiling medallion, but it is so impressive.

The Remodel Begins

We started the remodeling of our four front rooms this past Monday.  We are opening up the walls between the rooms, taking out some of the doors in the foyer that lead to the upstairs, living and dining rooms.  As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are the pictures, before and during.

 Wall paper near the floor.  I can't tell if it was a border or was on the whole wall. 

 Is that not cool.  I assume that it is original to the house.  That was almost as exciting as if I could have found so gold or silver.  Still might, lots to uncover still.

 This is a border that is just below the ceiling, I think it looks original.  When the room is cleared out I will climb up on a ladder a hope I can remove some and clean it up.

The cut outs in the wall would have most likely be used for heating.

Fall Family Reunion

It seems that summer is so busy that it seems hard to find time to get together for a family reunion.  This past summer we had so many family, class reunions, cousin reunions plus getting the vacation/work and now rental house ready to rent that we decided to have the Joe &  Barbara family reunion in the fall.

We found a beautiful home to rent in Heber City that had three floors and plenty of bedrooms for everyone.  Doug and Jessica came up with a theme of Harry Potter.  They planned the first dinner together.  We went all out trying to make it like the first meal when the students arrive at the castle. For the meal we had pumpkin soup served in a large pumpkin, dry ice in bowls,  Butter Beer, a Potions Station and Honeydukes.  Jessica make chocolate frogs that everyone loved.

After dinner we were sorted into our houses.  We had a sorting hat with a phone in it and then Doug went outside and talked to each of people as they were sorted.  Carter was not sure he wanted to wear the hat that talked.  When he found out it was Uncle Doug talking he was OK with it.

There was a small pond down the road that the boys could fish in.  All the boys had tons of fun catching fish.  Even Grandma Willis went fishing. 

We also got to ride the Heber Train and ride up Provo Canyon.  They called it the haunted canyon and told ghost stories on the ride up.  We had a great time.

Spaghetti Squash Tree

This spring I planted a spaghetti squash plant. I had no idea it could grow into a tree that looks like a pine tree with squash growing from it but here is the proof and this not Photo Shopped (like I would know how to anyway).

Finally I can post

For the past three months I have not been able to log in to my blog to post. Today Joe helped find out the problem, it had a different address. I don't know how it changed but it did. Then I went to post and I could not post anything :). What is going on? Joe found out under settings there was an up date. So it appears I am back in business.