Let's Talk About Wood Paneling

So, lets talk about wood paneling. You all have seen the style, that wood stuff so popular when many of us were young. You just nailed it up there and voila! instant wall covering.


This room was covered in the stuff. So of course, down it came. Now, if you ever have to do this, you should remove the baseboard first. It makes it a lot easier. The top trim came down with the paneling. So before, we have this lovely paneling, fluorescent light, and counter top desk.

In case you haven't quite figured out the orientation to this room, it has two doorways. This doorway looks into the kitchen. It will get closed off soon. The other doorway is in the hallway, where normal bedroom doors are located.

The paneling came down in entire sheets for the most part. Super easy, just pop off the baseboard, pry a corner loose with your handy-dandy crowbar, grab, and pull. Off comes the sheet. Do not get stabbed by wayward nails. 

If you look closely, you can see the nail tracks in the wall. All that is required is to pop out the nails and fill the holes. Then, it's ready for it's new coat of paint.

The closet. See it now? Cause soon, it's getting a makeover too. Also, I would like you to note the ladder. A garage sale model that we stole from Matt's mom and have bolted together several times. We have decided, after both nearly breaking our necks in this endeavor, to treat ourselves to a new one this weekend. So we don't die. That is very important.

And the carpet is gone too. After pulling up all the carpet, I think we've decided to go with hardwoods throughout the house. We were not lucky enough to find that underneath the floors, but no matter. But let me tell you something. I know that carpet had been there awhile. But when we pulled it up, there were entire piles of dirt and dust on the floor. It was disgusting. The carpet, the pad, and the floor underneath were all nasty.  And after pulling up every single carpet tack, many of which fell apart in our hands, I was pretty bent on only hardwoods.

We thought that was the only paneling in the house. We thought. Remember that wall the girls were tearing the paper off so easily? The dining room wall? Well, there was some sort of paper cover on the wall that the paper was sticking to. And under that? Yup, wood paneling. Although, when we attempted to tear that off, there was another unpleasent suprise. Somebody loved that paneling so much, they wanted to look at it on the wall forever. So they glued it to the wall. And of course, you can guess what happened when we ripped it down.

Yeah, ruined. Totally. So that wall came down too.We let Emily have her hand at this one.

I think it was good for her :)

After it was all torn down, this is what we were left with.

A nice, big, open kitchen/dining area that flows right to the living room. Perfect :) I mean, except for that door there.

There. I can live with that!

Knocking 'Em Down

What you see now is more kitchen demolition. It took the better part of a few days to totally complete this. We did skip around quite a bit. Sometimes we'd work in here, then go rip up carpet or something. Then we'd come back to the kitchen.

The big ugly boxes on the ceiling came down, and that little wall came down as well. You can see the studs in this picture. I need to take another of all those studs gone. Now that the load is off that wall, it is totally opened up. Note the garage door placed smack dab in the kitchen. It's getting moved. Under the wallpaper was green paint and even uglier wallpaper.

 The bulkheads are big, empty boxes designed to lower the kitchen right over where the cabinets would be. I am sure this was stylish at some point. It is not anymore.

Taking those down was hard, hard work. I won't lie. This is where the demo really started to become not so fun. Matt said a tornado could wipe away the whole house, and all that would be left is this square in the middle of the kitchen where the boxes were built. All plywood and boards and sheet rock. 

 Once we took all that off, we literally had to cut the boards out to make it budge. It took awhile. But they are gone. And it enlarges the room so much.

 As I began taking off other paper and tile, I discovered the sheet rock was totally ruined under it. In several places. This is what led to the total gut job of the kitchen. Every single wall ended up coming down, and the ceiling too.There simply wasn't anything we could do to save it. The bright side is that now I have an entirely clean slate to work with. If you follow me on Pinterest, you have seen the enormous amount of kitchen pictures I have pinned. I have one particular picture all picked out for the layout that should work almost perfectly. We shall see.

And the trash pile. My tender little hands were very tired after cleaning all of this up.

I hope you are enjoying our journey so far. There are still demo pics to come of the rest of the house. Then, it will be on to the fun part, putting it all back together!

Back off, folks. I got this one.

The Walls Come Tumbling Down

OK, so tumbling isn't the word for it. Ripping down with a crowbar is more reasonably what happened. The first task on our agenda was to open up the kitchen to the rest of the house. That closed off, tiny box of a room just wasn't working for us. We both were itching to take our frustrations of the last 9 months on something. And that wall was our target. Here it is before. Notice the teeny doorway and the wood shelf closing off the room.

 

By the way, that wallpaper was the only paper that came down so easy a three year old could tear it down with her bare hands. 

First, we had to remove all the cabinets. We are going to attempt to use as many of them as possible. They are in excellent condition and have a lot of built ins inside them. They are nearly new. But they are getting painted. Just saying the word "paint" makes my dad's face twist all up. He likes them that color. That's sad. 

In case you ever need to know this, your cabinets are held to your wall with about 2 screws each. So when they say you shouldn't hang from them, you should listen. Oh, and that counter top? Yeah, 2 screws for each section. Nice. Anyway, here they are, out of the kitchen so we can attack the wall. 

 

There now, isn't that better already!

That corner won't stay, you will see it disappear soon. The far beam is load bearing, so we have to shore it up before we can just rip it down. The opposite wall, in later posts, you will see is gone too. Before we could get too far, we had to figure out electrical and cap it off. It would be a shame if our new house electrocuted us.

A bit of the pile of trash we created.

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Do you see how much it opens it up already? It felt much bigger at that point, but of course we had a lot more we wanted to do. The cross beam will have to say. Can you see the "decorative" ceiling in the living room? In order to fix that, we'd have to bring down the ceiling. It is easier to leave up the cross beam and have a natural break than to tear it all out and start over. This is what happened after the first night, after we took the kids back to Grandma's. It was productive and very therapeutic :)

Before the Demo, There was Art...

Can you see the house?

A little chalk time on an ugly wall.

They loved leaving their mark on everything!

And yes, we let her leave her mark, too.

A Few "Before" Pictures

We took an entire week off to gut this house from start to finish. Our goal was to have all the trash hauled off prior to the kids and I leaving. But before we get to all that, there are the "before" pics, of course!

The Living room. Notice the fantastic wallpaper.

The dining area. They got a hold of that wallpaper immediately.

Kitchen. Notice that the child labor is not free...

Rest of kitchen. Notice ugly corner, bulkheads on ceiling, and wood decoration.

Landon's room. The paneling says it all.

Yeah, that ain't gonna work...

The girls' room. Can you see the green carpet? And the sports players? They were not amused.

The mommy and daddy room. If you zoom in, you will notice the fantastic duck border.

Obviously, a heaver front door is in order. As is dealing with that narrow, dark hallway.

This isn't the entire house, of course. There are no basement pictures or pics of the outside. Just a few before pictures to see what we have to contend with. There is wallpaper on practically every surface of this house. And it's all ugly. The kitchen layout is crappy. The bathroom is tiny. But don't worry. We are dealing with it all.

The Intro

This blog has been created for our family and friends to follow along with us as we attempt a home renovation. The story is the same as so many families. Daddy gets a new job, so we move and buy a new house. The very first look at this house, in pictures, our children promptly proclaimed it as ugly. Or as our middle daughter put it, "our so, so ugly house." Thus it has now been nicknamed "ugly house." We are going to make it fabulous.

We are attempting to do as much of this on our own as possible. There will be lots of pictures and lots of keeping it real. There will be little, if any, professional help. There will be child labor. They are paid well in McDonald Happy Meals. And there will be, in the end, we hope a fantastic house. So follow along, if you are brave enough...

*Disclaimer: My father is a professional contractor and is helping us a lot. He doesn't count as the professional help, since we don't pay him well :)