Seeing another room renovated in our house is always an exciting relief. It’s that fun time when you get to decorate and design it with the finishing touches. The paint has begun to add character. The furnishings make it cozy.
As much as I love that feeling, I absolutely enjoy the beginning of a new project. Why you might ask? Because I like to demolish stuff. I get to bring out the sledge hammer and smash away!
One of the most satisfying rooms to rip apart in our house was our now bedroom upstairs. Someone had previously make-shifted a bedroom up there. Though I’m pretty sure it went against every housing code out there. It was like walking into a museum.
It had the brown panel walls, panel ceiling, and brown-orange shag carpet. A couple of the ceiling tiles had given way and it looked like a bird had gotten in at one time and made a nest in the opening. There was a door in the far-right corner that blocked the only tiny window in the room.
The worst of it all was the one-and-a-half-foot border that went between the brown panel walls and the ceiling. It was leopard print … with leopard heads printed all over it.
It was a hot summer’s day. Michael left for work and I “went to work” on the bedroom. I grabbed my hammer and started smashing away! I was like a pig in mud. I ripped down the panel walls and took everything back to the studs.
Then I practiced my javelin throws. Everything went out the dormer window upstairs into our backyard. I had to throw it over our deck and onto the grass. By the time Michael came home for lunch, I had all sorts of metal trim and wood sticking up out of the grass.
It all literally looked like the inside of a barn by the time I was finished. It had the old plank wood on the roof and floors and beams running as support in between. It had knob and tube electrical wiring. We rewired the electrical in the rest of the house already, so I was satisfied ripping all of that out as well.
Then went the beams. I grabbed the hammer and smashed those out too. It was all fine and dandy until I smashed part of the skin off my finger when I missed one shot. But I was on such an adrenaline kick, that I took a picture of it, washed it off, threw a bandage on, and went back at it.
Unfortunately, I was a little too ambitious. I took all the insulation out, with my dad’s help, thinking that we would get to renovating the room soon. But we had a couple other projects on the go, so it took longer than I thought. Nothing like some serious heat loss for a couple of years. Oops!
Anyways, it all looks lovely now. We are thoroughly enjoying our special more up-to-date space.
I was starting to miss my bond with my hammer. It’s been too long. So, I was completely content a couple Saturdays ago when I was able to pull my old companion back out again. This time, we had already done most of the renovating. We had an old porch out back no longer in use that needed to come down. The top of it had already been removed last fall. It was just the base and the stairs left. I dusted off my trusty hammer and crowbar and went to work while Michael built a little shed. It felt so good to test my strength again and see the backyard get cleaned up a bit.
Now to wait until we can do the floor in our back room. What fun that will be to get in there and rip that stuff out!
The projects are endless. Everyone has something they enjoy doing when it comes to renovations. Mine, strangely enough, just happens to be the demolition. What’s yours?
