Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes

For the past week there's been a lot of demolition going on at our Ugly Duckling. The dumpster in front of the house is 2/3 full with debris of all kinds: wooden boards, tile, cement board, drywall - you name it, it's in there, and to our surprise we're getting ready to kick off the "put things back together" phase. Let's hear it for Sam and his demolition skills! Frankly, without him we'd be chipping away at the parts that aren't staying until Christmas ... or longer.

We've been doing a whole lot, especially over the past weekend, so I have a few posts saved up and ready to go. [Actually, I have more posts or items to post about than days in a week, kind of, and am slightly confused on how to go about posting them. Any ideas?]. I guess I'll tackle it one day at a time, even if that means that this blog is no longer progressing in real time. That, of course, renders that progress ticker box to the right pretty useless too.


Anyways, to make a long story short, I think a few Before and In-Progress shots are in order, so here you go. Please excuse the quality - we're still without electricity at the Ugly Duckling and the weather has been all gloom and doom down here in NE Florida.

Entry Hall
Once upon a time our house had an entry hall. In order to offer a sufficient number of rooms to work as a rental apartment, however, the walls to the stairs and the livingroom were sealed and a closet built into the space. Voila - A teeny cramped bedroom! You can easily tell which part doesn't belong (and was consequentely busted out] if you look at the base molding ...

Some scoring, punching, ripping and cutting later we reconnected both halves of the house and turned our Ugly Duckling from a Duplex to a Single-Family home

Together with the newly opened wall to the livingroom for which we are hoping to score a mad deal on a French Door at some point, this small change had a major impact on the flow and feel of the entire house. All of the sudden, the layout of rooms started to make sense and the added light is just amazing. I think even the Ugly Duckling is happy about it. It certainly feels that way! One day we'd love to restore the old staircase, newel post, spindels and handrailing, but until then this would do ... or would have until our contractor had an idea that tickled hubby's favor. So while I was gone to Orlando he did this

That's right, he busted out some more wall following the angle of the handrail. Before punching out the first piece our munchkin must have cautinoned him with a comment along the lines of "Maybe we should wait until Mommy comes home?" but he sure loved helping tear out some wall. He gets this glint in his eyes when he tells the story.

So, there you have it. Our progress in the entry hall. It's turning out -exactly- like we planned it and it's looking even better than we imagined!