Until this past week our recent round of renovations (and I've forgotten what month we're up to let alone what week as far as renovations go) have been rather slow-going. I was tempted to type "like watching paint dry" but that suggests it has been quite boring which, I will admit, has been true most of the time.
But there have been some surprises too.
Our builder wanted to strip the paint off the timber surrounding our bifold doors. We had already decided that we'd paint these surrounds to match all the other woodwork, but we decided to let him go ahead. What can I say but Wow!
From this (you can just see one side of the doors on the right of the photo) …
to this …
Now we're debating whether to follow the builder's recommendation to strip the doors as well. Since he was right about the surrounds, we probably will at least see what condition they're in.
Before all this, DH had stripped the paint off the timber surrounding the window box even though, as you've probably guessed, we had plans to paint this as well. But despite evidence of old borer (which DH has discovered a way to minimise) we're also liking how this timber is looking.
The surprises didn't stop in this room. When the wallboards were removed from the wall between our entrance and hallway we discovered this …
We had always suspected there was paneling behind some of the walls in our house, but we weren't expecting this. And what purpose did it serve? Was it to separate the public areas of the house from the private? The weird thing is, that looking at the evidence, this paneling used to go right across the opening between these two areas which makes us wonder how on earth did the original owners get from the front door into the rest of the house? There is only one door from the entrance and that leads into the front living room. It appears to be original but we were unable to find evidence of where any other doors may have once been.
Our builder suggested making a feature of the paneling in the entrance but in the end we decided against it. One, there wasn't enough to go right around the room; two, for some reason some boards had been cut off at the bottom (and others had been cut to make way for power and light switches); and three, to remove the stain would have most likely required a chemical bath. We had, when we were first planning our renovations, thought about installing paneling in the entrance and the hallway, but had gone off the idea, so it threw us for a spin for a bit when the paneling was exposed.
However, the paneling has gone (although we've kept it with plans to make it into a bedhead one day in the very far future) and our new front door has been installed. I need to write this in capital letters. OUR NEW FRONT DOOR HAS BEEN INSTALLED. This was something we researched and planned and argued with the joiner over as to size and configuration and agonized over for a very long time, so to see it finally come together has been wonderful. More so, because we're pleased with how it looks. Not to mention, it's no longer propped up against the wall where we were always a little afraid it could be knocked and come crashing down.
This stage of the renovations has been the most disruptive by far - perhaps even more so than when we did our kitchen. We've had no family room (still being worked on), no living room (sealed off so the builder could work on the entrance), no access to the house from the front, and building materials and dust have migrated as far down the hallway as the door to the kitchen. If that's not bad enough, I suspect that the next few stages are only going to get progressively worse as far as disruption to our lives and sanity.
But tonight after the builder packed up I got to run around with duster and vacuum cleaner and mop and now I feel as if our house is back in shape despite the evidence to the contrary. Funny, but a year ago this would have seemed like a demolition site but now it feels almost normal. And since the builder has another job to go to before coming back and working on our house, I get to enjoy this kind of normal for a while longer … and to take a deep breath and relax ... before the next disruptive phase kicks in.
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