Here are a couple of stitched panoramas of the room before I started. We've be using the room primarily for storage and the occasional guest. The shed allowed us to empty it (but it was hard to keep the two-year-old from moving right in).
I was very curious what I'd find in the walls. Would there be any insulation? Dead rats? A bag of silver dollars? Here are a couple more photos of the room minus the wall board.
So... what was found? Well, no insulation. Not surprising considering the mold growth on the walls. Also, no headers above either of the windows. I guess the walls were built either before headers had been invented or the people who built the walls didn't believe in headers. I did find a dead rat. It had been dead for a long, long time. Another thing I found (and I expected it) was a opossum den under the bathtub (which was revealed since wall board doesn't typically get run below the bathtub. There was some water damage in that area, too. But nothing so horrible that it made me cry. And believe me, this house has made me cry in the past.
I loaded 780 pounds of gypsum board into the truck and went to the transfer station to dump it before it absorbed any rain.
I'm framing a new wall to accommodate some future bathroom expansions and a new closet for the second bedroom. When I pulled up the carpet and old vinyl tile in this area... wow! I was very surprised to find a beautiful old wood floor! I looks like fir. And it really is gorgeous. We're going to keep it and try to rehab it (lots of sanding and then either oil or polyurethane). I think the wood floor runs into the hallway, too. So excited!
