When we moved here, we had a delusional dream of going one room at a time—demo, cleanup, renovate, on to the next room, repeat until finished. But, as anyone who has ever renovated can tell you, it rarely works out that way. In older homes especially, things have often been done and redone to the point where one project likely involves at least one room other than the one you’re working in. Add that to all the delays we ran into in the bathroom, and the fact that we can’t sit idle, and you have yourself a myriad of projects going on at once.

That brings me to the next project I’d like to share with you: the den. We first used this space as a dining room, but that never really felt right. We were used to having a large island as well as an open-to-the-kitchen dining area. This room is totally closed off from other spaces—as is common of older homes—and contains the only built-in fireplace. So, it was really reminiscent of a cozy living space, minus the cozy (for now ;).

If I haven’t yet shared this with you, the entire house (including backs of doors) was covered in paneling. While there are worse things, the paneling combined with the ceiling tiles made for an overly white, sterilized commercial feel…the opposite of what I envisioned. Sadly, I put Superman in charge of the “before” pictures, so I don’t have a great view to share with you, but I think you can get the gist from these photos.

Not terrible, but not homey either. The outside walls share the same beautiful vertical plank walls underneath as the bathroom. Again, we chose to leave them exposed, chinking the spaces in between. Instant upgrade!

That left us with the wall along the stairs and an interior wall that had nothing on the other side of the paneling. After shoring up the studs/rebuilding the framing of the interior wall, we put drywall in its place. Because we knew we wouldn’t leave the ceiling tile, there was no point in working around it, regardless of what was underneath. So, in order to drywall all the way to the ceiling, we needed to remove the tiles. We were left with…

What a chorus of hallelujahs! But seriously, pretty cool, right? Since this ceiling is in great shape, we are going to leave it and repaint it. We can now finish the drywall and save ourselves time and money (hooray!) on the ceiling. Now, on to the stair wall.

We are in no way engineers, but both Superman and I are pretty intelligent people, and firm believers that humans have the incredible ability to study and learn anything. As such, we were slightly concerned with what we found to be the [lack of] stair and upper floor support. We removed the paneling only to find a vertical wood wall, mostly intact, with a stair stringer on the other side (in the stairwell). I can’t say whether or not this is the original support. I tend to think yes, but it does look as if it has been worked on over the years. Regardless, our thought processes (along with the slightly sloping floor upstairs) led us to believe that the stairs needed a little more support. Time to break out the jacks.

After lifting the den floor from the basement, little by little, we then jacked up the den ceiling/ second floor. We got to a place that we felt was within a livable tolerability. Now we’re ready to add permanent supports from the first to the second floor.

I have always had a childish dream of adding a murphy door to my home. Not that I need to hide anything, but I love the amusement of a secret entrance to somewhere. I had Superman on board with it prior to removing the paneling. However, the need for supporting the upper floor of our home outweighs my desire for a secret basement entrance, so alas, my dream has died. But, I wasn’t ready for a boring old wall, either. Old homes are known for all their charm. One such charm is all the built-in shelves and nooks. So, rather than put in framing and some sheets of drywall, I convinced Superman to make a bookshelf wall. We have tons of books [yay homeschool!] and it brings some charm and warmth back to the house.

Framing has begun! It’s hard to say what this looked like before getting covered with paneling. The residue hints at being covered with wallpaper at some point.

Load-bearing studs are in! Before putting up shelves, we painted the back wall. It pained me a bit, as I love natural wood, but the colonial blue was a good choice!

This wall makes me so happy! We had a more formal foyer at our old house that I had always dreamed of making into a library. Seeing this project come together is a dream come true. There was some existing electrical to reroute here, but that’s ok. It was another blessing-in-disguise, as it helped motivate us to get the last of the ungrounded wiring out of our main breaker panel. We had to make the shelves only as wide as the supports would allow, and after scouring google images, we decided the random height was most fitting for us. And, however much I mourn the murphy door’s absence, I think Superman hit it out of the park on this one!

Time to put that space to good use! What do you think?! I love love love that it has both beauty and functionality!

meanwhile

Den

getting there!