Whose Stupid Idea Was This, Anyway?

It all started innocently enough.  Last summer, we decided to have a "campfire jam".  Invite a bunch of musical friends over and sing songs around the campfire.  The driving rainstorm forced us indoors - into our nice big double living room.  But I found myself wishing that the archway between the two rooms wasn't there, since you couldn't see the people who were in the other room.

And that got me to thinking about how much I disliked the brown '70's paneling.   "How about" I said innocently enough, "we take down that partial wall and make one big room and take down the paneling?"

And that's where it began.  The paneling covered plaster.  If we take the paneling off, the plaster will be a mess.  We called Hubby's construction worker cousin over to check and make sure the wall wasn't a bearing wall.  It wasn't but her recommended we take the plaster down too, and put up sheet rock.  And hey, if you're going to do that, you might as well pull down the lathes and put some insulation back there.

On top of that, let's put in some new electrical outlets cause, let's face it, one outlet in each room just wasn't enough.  So Hubby has spent the last month putting in new outlets and trying to untangle the bizarre maze of electrical lines that people have spent the past 100 years creating in our basement.

Finally it was time to start ripping down paneling.  Hubby did that himself.

I foolishly said I wanted to be involved, so I got to do this:

It took us a whole day to rip down all the plaster.  The mess was just incredible.  Another whole day we and my daughter Jamie spent ripping down lathes and scooping up black, blown-in insulation.

The plastic did no good whatsoever.  We had plaster dust everywhere. I spent the good part of a third day cleaning up the house.     We ended out with twice as many bags of debris as is shown here.

It's been a real learning experience (as well as an expense I didn't anticipate) to get rid of it all.

The only thing we haven't done yet is get rid of the middle wall!!

Now we get to enjoy our living room looking like this. (I don't know if you can see it, but that's a super-large bottle of ibuprofen on the coffee table.  Our bodies need it so bad!)

Hopefully soon, we'll have Hubby's cousin come over and put up the sheetrock for us.  That's the only thing we are paying someone to come in and do.   After that the molding, painting and floors are projects we get to anticipate!