So much done... So little to show

Its amazing. The first few weeks it felt like every little thing was a huge improvement and you feel like you're making tons of progress. Then... you get to the point where you spend 2 hours turning this:

Gifts from the House!

When you buy an old house you hope to find neat things left by the previous owners.  Sometimes the things you find make you sad... like a horrific excuse for an electrical system and Asbestos pipe wrap.  Other times you find awesome stuff! 

When we first looked at the house I noted that there were some doors up in the garage attic.  At some point I went over and confirmed they were the Pantry door and the swinging Kitchen door that lead to the dining room. More on that later... 

The "find" if you will came about when Becky and I were standing in the basement trying to figure out where the rest of it was.  The basement isn't quite as large as the footprint of the first floor and we were trying to figure out why.  This lead Becky outside to try and figure out where that missing space was.  The next thing I heard from her was, "There are doors under the porch."  This confused me quite a bit as we weren't really missing any doors.  So outside I went to take a look.  I was presented with this..

 The side opening of the front porch with the guard thing removed. 

Honey, I think I blew up the Dining Room!

Wallpaper

It seems like such a great design decision at the time. Then you paint over it.. Or maybe paper over it.. Then you sell the house to some guy named Emilio and laugh as you drive away.  

I like wallpaper, I really do.  I just don't like tar covered 1930s wallpaper that was painted over.  Or horrible plate rails that aren't really plate rails (they have grooves...for you know...plates) but actually two pieces of base moulding that were tacked together and slapped up onto the wall of my dining room right at eye level such that it makes the room feel shorter than it is and makes the giant dining room windows look funny.  

So I did what anyone else would do.   I TORE IT ALL OUT IN A FIT OF RAGE!!!  Well.. what really happened was that Becky and I went to the Serv-U Locksmiths over in Springfield to get some copies of the skeleton keys we have (the only keys we have for the house) made.  While there we met their "wallpaper guy" who upon learning of our desire to remove wallpaper from plaster walls informed us to go against all commonly given advice and not use wallpaper remover or water or anything like that but to instead dry scrape it with a wall stripper he had, basically a 4in razorblade on a handle).  

We got home new toys in hand and this happened...