The first swing
Finally! Time to get to work on the interior! As I mentioned on another page, the previous owners of our house were Amish. They had a larger family than we do and different needs to serve. Enter one of the biggest challenges to face in our transition: seven people, one bathroom.
Our old home had 3 large, full baths and a half bath in our mud room. Fighting over bathroom space never occurred to my children (obviously they never had to live with my older sister). Now we were down to 1 small bathroom that had no tub and a shower that would scare you away.
However, the home previously had a second bathroom, and the plumbing was still intact. That bathroom had been converted to a pantry to better serve the needs of the family before us, but we love our indoor plumbing! That’s not a thing I thought I’d ever be proclaiming to the world, but this experience has made us all more grateful for life’s simplicities. But we are not ready to forego some modern amenities. Time to resurrect the second bathroom!
Amish are very handy as well as very practical, so the handmade cabinets and shelves in the pantry were very simple in construction which made it easy to remove them. Now that we are homesteading, we need to be sure to think ahead and determine the potential usefulness for all materials. Instead of smashing them up and throwing them in the dumpster, we carefully deconstructed them and took the wood to the barn for future projects and recycled the vinyl liners as waterproofing for chicken tractors.
Once the shelves were out, I convinced Superman to (against his better judgment) poke a hole in the ceiling, ya know, just to see what was up there. Surprise! Wood plank ceilings! I was not at all disappointed. Superman took down the last bits of drywall ceiling. Unfortunately, there were a few small areas that needed repair from previous lighting and plumbing, but beyond the holes, I saw what I had really been hoping for: hand hewn beams. Now I had a choice to make: charming wood plank or exposed joists and beams. Decisions, decisions…
Speedy and Superman posing as they finish the demo of the pantry shelves.
The first GOOD surprise! Under the drywall ceiling is a charming wood plank ceiling!
You can see more of the plank ceiling here. Don’t you love it?!
