torley manor

Wednesday night we ripped the carpeting off the stairs. It went fairly quickly. There was some nasty dust under the carpeting and foam, but we were fine because we wore our breathers (you know i don’t work without one of them breathers!), as should you whenever tearing apart something in your old home. I think my lungs got pretty messed up the first couple years i lived here cuz i was tearing shit apart but not wearing protection. Lately i’ve been smart and have worn protection and my lungs seem in better shape than they have in awhile.

Anyway, enough safety first lectures. Next lecture – before starting a home project that involves demolition, take a “before” photo and make sure the batteries in the camera are in good shape (or that you have backups) – as we did not. We have rechargeables, but they seemed to have shit the bed, so our attempts to document the procedure didn’t go that well. But here’s one shot of me during the process and a shot of the stairs after we were done.

Feeling pretty happy with our work, we figured we should finish the drywall in the front hallway and make some overall design decisions before proceeding any further with any attempts to re-finish the stairs.

Wake up saturday morning. Emma had off work, so we lounged about in bed and began to talking about the status of the hallway/stair project. She thought we should rip out the carpet in the front hallway. I suggested that it might make more sense to tear out the capret in the upstairs hallway. Before you know it our plans to hit up the museum are cancelled and we are tearing out the upstairs hallway carpeting. Once again, its a simple process that goes smoothly, the only problem – we realize that its ugly ass linoleum tile underneath this carpet and lots of it is cracked and all of it is ugly. boo hiss!!!

ugly ass cracked tile

Were we done now?? Not quite yet. We still had the arch!! At the top of our stairs there is an arch at the hallway leading to the bathroom. It is on an angle and as such the one side of the arch has a small portion of wall that sticks out into the hallway and is a toe-stubbing hazard, not to mention being kinda stupid looking (i’d show you a photo but having not fixed our battery issue yet, we were unable to take the requisite “before” photo). Having had enough of the arch, we decided now was a good time as any to remove it. Thus we stripped apart the plaster and into the skeleton of this beast. Unfortunately we were unable to completely finish the beast as we’ll need a Sawzall or similar tool to cut out part of the structure of it.

Witness the carnage!!

Of course having done all this damage we are left with a host of questions. How much further do we go with the demolition (do we tear about the drop ceiling while we’re at it? do we replace our broken and ugly banister) How do we brighten up our hallway when it only has one light and all the trim/doors are stained this dark dark brown? What do we cover the horrible tile with? What colors do we paint everything?

A couple of these questions we’ll need to sleep on for a couple more days at least. In the meantime we made a basic timeline of tasks to come and a checklist of the remaining questions.