The Godson came over this morning, and he and The Squire began to remove the sheet rock from the Big Room. As it turned out, the situation wasn’t nearly as bad as we had feared. There was water damage under both the window that had been professionally installed, and the window where the a/c unit had been. (That was our fault.) There was also an unholy mess where the original part of the house joined the dormer we put on when we bought the place, but no black mold or other ickiness. They only had to remove a total of about four feet, instead of the 30 feet we had been told. Whew! The contractor wanted to pull down all twenty feet of the long wall, and the ten feet on the short side, which turned out to be totally unnecessary.
stock photo
The Squire can install the insulation and replace the sheet rock by himself, but we will need to bring in a contractor to redo the ceiling. The ceiling in the TV room is interlocking square tiles, which the contractor had originally wanted to pull down and replace, until The Squire took him into the attic and showed him the poured-in fiberglass insulation that would come cascading down on his head if he did so. As that point, the man grasped the logic of simply putting sheet rock over the existing ceiling. It’ll make the ceiling a half an inch lower, but whoop, whoop.
One thing I have always wanted to do in there was put bead board over the lower half of the walls, with a narrow shelf of some sort along the top edge. The only picture I could find was this stock photo of a bathroom, with what appears to be window sill for the shelf. I just think bead board is so “country chic” – I love the look! The stuff comes in 4 x 8 sheets, so we will make it four feet high, just to save cutting. Not sure what colour will go on the walls; possibly a dark green. We’ll see.
And, new carpet, since I bought what is in there when I was still at Blue Cross; I left in 1983, so it is probably due for replacement. No need to rush into these things.
I had toyed with the idea of replacing the double bed with a queen, but even going the IKEA route would be very expensive, and getting a queen-sized box spring up those stairs is physically impossible.
thisendoftheswamp 