This is actually part of last weekend and this weekend's endeavors. Last weekend, I helped my wife open a doorway that had been closed up between her bedroom and the kitchen. While it had afforded the bedroom privacy, it was not done in a way that made it look like a seamless wall. With reclaimed knotty pine from other parts of my endeavors we were able to do that. K hates the demo. I tell her you need to talk to the nails and ask them how they want to come out. LOL She remains unamused. However she ROCKS taking the materials and fitting them back together in a virtually seamless re-install. This is the "new wall"
On the inside of the bedroom K had to hang new drywall which she did yesterday. She is a whiz with drywall too! Wednesday on her day off she will tape and mud it. Then all that will be left is sanding and painting that wall. If the paint store can't match our chip we will just make it an accent wall and do it a shade or two darker than the other walls.
Today I insulated the back wall of the "alley way" of our kitchen. Our house has little and in some cases NO insulation. Well it has foam board that went on when we had it sided but I am sure judging by how cold our home is in winter and how high my utility bills are, that the R value on that is pretty low. We are having a new, slightly shorter window installed at the end of this skinny part of the kitchen because we stole 8 precious inches for our bathroom re-do. This will give us a straight bathroom wall (maybe the only straight one in the house!) and an energy efficient window as the existing one was put in by my grandfather in the 60's. When I was harvesting boards for the wall project I got them out of the bottom and top of this back wall as well as from a strange upper storage cabinet that we removed. Of course taking off the horsehair plaster and lathing brought the walls to the studs and there was, as we thought, zero insulation. This wall is almost on the true north of our home and this part of the kitchen is cold enough that in the winter we have gotten skims of ice on the pets water bowls down here.
So for a lot of folks this would be a really non sexy pic. I mean, it isn't like the beautiful wall my wife made. But what it is, is the promise of hopefully more warmth! That is the first few batts of rock wool that I put in. I have done the whole back wall and part of the outer side wall. We can all ready see a difference in the way the area feels. So much so that we are getting a price on replacing the other window on the side outer wall. This will require moving out a run of cabinets, cutting a corian counter (NOT something I am doing on my own) but then I can remove the wood carefully, take out the plaster and lathing and rock wool that wall as well. We will label the boards and I'll turn over the re-install to my capable wife. The reason we were able to harvest wood from the back wall of the alley is that I have saved some lovely pine boards to make a bookshelf for cookbooks. It will go right under that window up to where ever the new window will be. The boards are 8 inches which happens to be exactly the length of the cat perch that used to be down there. So the top will be kept free of books but can have a cushion on it for the cats so they can watch the birds and squirrels to their hearts content.
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