Great Room Project: Before the Demolition

We’ve been at our Great Room Project since November, so I suppose it’s about time I posted some pictures of it.

After we got our Master Bedroom (sort of) finished in November ’05, we moved into it with the plan of living in just the “south wing” and shutting off the rest of the house to save money. We decided to move the computer and TV into the middle bedroom we’d just vacated. (We call it the pink room because it really does have pink walls. Thankfully not hot pink, though!) The rest of the Great Room furniture would be moved into the parlor and green bedroom. We’d then work on refurbishing the Great Room.

We had 4 days over Thanksgiving to do the move, but didn’t get the motivation to do so until the Monday after Thanksgiving, which was a bonus “snow day” for us. So while the snow flew outside, we cleared out the Great Room.

We put pink insulation panels between the Great Room/Kitchen door and window pass-through so that all we had to heat was the “south wing” and (when we were in there) the pink room.

Since we didn’t want to heat the room, and it would be too cold to work without it, we put the project on hold till February while we discussed what we wanted to do with it.

There were two major problems in the room: the chimney and a section of ceiling. The chimney is located in the northwest corner of the room, and over the years the plaster cracked along it from floor to ceiling. Not a pretty sight. And when our house inspector had been in the attic five years ago, he’d accidentally stepped off the joists and onto the plaster over the Great Room, thus creating an ever-expanding crack in the ceiling.

I wanted to repair the plaster cracks like we had in the Master Bedroom; Monte wanted to tear off all the plaster and start fresh with drywall. But he agreed to do it my way. It meant I had to give up a feature I really wanted: replacing the center ceiling fan with a ceiling fan over the living area and a chandelier over the dining area. Monte wouldn’t do that if the ceiling was plaster, because walking in the attic would just cause more cracks to form.

So, in late February, Monte started with the ceiling. He tried to screw the section of falling plaster back into place, but it didn’t work. I was in the pink room working on the computer when I heard a large crash. Thankfully, it wasn’t Monte who fell, but a huge chunk of plaster.

We had a quick conference. Monte didn’t think repairing the plaster would work so well after all. I was willing to let him tear down the ceiling (I really wanted those two new lights) but he said if he was going to tear that down, he wanted to do the walls, too. So, since I really, really wanted that change in lighting, I agreed to do it his way.

A little more sealing off of the doors, and our project was under way.

Next: What were we thinking?!