I was almost certain that I was done with demolition. That our house was done being a place that was almost constantly full of the fine, floating dust that can only be created when one is tearing things apart…but I should have known better. I should have known that just when you think you’re done, you remember that there’s that one section of things that you needed take down that you forgot about; and in my case, I somehow forgot about most of a wall.
We needed to test a theory about whether or not there was insulation in the wall between the room that will be our kitchen and the garage, and if there wasn’t would we be able to get any in there with the space that we had…
NO. There was NO insulation in the wall. What you can’t really see in this picture is how little space there was between the wall and the brick: at most 1″, the width of those faring strips that the drywall was attached to plus a bit… Needless to say this made for some interesting questions and thoughts about whoever put this together. The rest of the wall continued in very much the same fashion, but with a couple surprises.
Notice anything weird about the outlet bellow? Look closely. Notice the conduit? No? That’s because the genius who installed that particular outlet decided it would be easier to drill the conduit through from the garage, through the double layer brick wall, than to bring it up along the wall from the basement (like you normally would). It’s just unreasonable.
I knew the garage and sunroom were not original. I KNEW IT! I absolutely sent my hubby an “I knew it! I told you so!”text after this header was uncovered. This is clearly, CLEARLY, a bricked over old window. I think after the massive fire that happened some time in the 1940’s (we think), the garage and sunroom were added and the window was bricked over. Although that does make me wonder why we still have the other window open to the garage…???
After finding these presents from the house, my hubby and I decided that the smartest thing to do was make sure that there weren’t any other MAJOR surprises hiding on this side of the first floor before we started rebuilding it, so the ceilings on that side of the first floor all had to come down.
Hey, there was a ceiling light up there…. More presents.
Now we’re ready to build some walls.
TallpixiDIY 
All I can say is oh my God! They don’t build them like they used to and that just might be a good thing.
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Ha ha ha!!!!! Well, actually, I think it was because they built the house so strongly that it survived the fire in the first place… From the evidence we’ve found, it took out half the roof and most of the second floor, but a good portion of the first floor was ok and the foundation has held for we don’t know how long… I think time is on Her side!
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