Step 2: Connect the top and the bottom floors

When the house was built, it was used as a rooming house. Judging from the holes and patches in the walls, it seems that at some point it may have been configured as a duplex. Most recently it was set up as two separate apartments, a larger one on the first floor and a smaller on the second floor. In order to achieve this, the stairwell in the middle of the house was boarded up. There were a series of two-by-fours, two-by-eights, and two-by-unclear-slightly-larger-amounts which were nailed to a frame of two-by-fours, and then plywood was nailed over the whole thing. The general approach to building this separation seems to have been that more and larger nails were better - no need for screws or other building materials that are easily removed. 

The first of the plywood comes up. As an aside, we don't have any lights upstairs right now, so this stunning photo shoot lighting is from a phone and the crack in the "floorboards". 

Lynn uses the sledgehammer to remove another board. She's kneeling on a weird long step/platform that was also built in, presumably for some security purpose I cannot fathom. 

The stairwell revealed!

Completely connected!

I'll have to make a point tomorrow of taking a picture of the sawed-off banister that is hot glued into the wall. 

Step 1: Remove the ugly/dangerous/dirty things from the floors.

There are so many ways to define the beginning of adulthood. Those of us who are still trainees in our 30's tend to spend a lot of time justifying that we transitioned to being "real adults" when we graduate from college, started supporting ourselves and our scholarly endeavors, moved away, became a "real doctor," or completed all of the training necessary for licensure and board certification. I will stand by my insistence in all of these milestones as markers of a truly adult existence, but will qualify that by staying that I've come to believe that there is not really a firm threshold to cross from young person to adult. 

And then we bought a house. As a milestone, it's out of reach for so many that adulthood certainly can't be predicated on home ownership. In the setting of the recent financial crisis, frankly, it seems imprudent to even suggest that signing for a mortgage is a right of passage. Nonetheless, I don't know that I've ever felt more like an adult than when we sat and, rather anticlimactically I might add, signed on the dotted lines and received the keys to our new home. 

As soon as the deed was registered, we started on the massive project that I anticipate chronicling here: restoring a 1933 gem to it's previous glory. There are layers of tile and carpet over the hardwood floors. The paint on the door frames and baseboards is so thick that they appear rounded in places, and there is certainly lead in the deeper layers. There are likely asbestos-filled wallpaper and tiles in many rooms, and although less medically ill-advised, the decor choices in most of the rooms were not good. 

Step 1: Remove the ugly/dangerous/dirty things from the floors. 

 Distressing carpet gives way to bright green carpet pad, which is stapled to thin wood paneling over the original hardwood floors. Oh, and some of what were supposed to be delicate nails holding the tack strip around the edges are actually 2.5" carpentry nails. 

 The first real glimpse of the hardwood floors. 

The shop vac poses jauntily with the fully uncovered hardwood floors.