Bye-Bye Wood Paneling!

We were busy little bees last week-end doing hard, hard work. On the agenda was to rip out the tack strip from the nasty carpet and start tearing off the wood paneling. We got that plus a little more done.

The tack strip was so hard. Most of it was rotted and crumbled as you hammered it meaning you could only get tiny little pieces off at a time. Plus it was NAILED into the CONCRETE every FOUR inches! We spent hours and hours and hours prying and hammering that junk off. Sunday night I almost made Brad take me to the ER because I thought my wrist was broken. (Not really...but it hurt super bad.) Plus my right hand was bruised from shoving the crow bar so much. The tack strip smelled like cat pee and was rusted and was everywhere...(remember, this is the house that even had carpet on the front of the tub!) But we removed it all!

Thankfully, taking out the wood paneling was a piece of cake. It literally popped right off. The hard part was having to get the floor molding, the ceiling molding, all the trim and the built-ins out first! Brad was a trooper prying all of it off, and most of it was even left intact.

We were able to take all of it down in the office/guest room. Remember what this room looked like BEFORE?

Whoa, ho, ho...does this room ever look different!?

We had to rip out the bookshelves and the built-in desk too! There are several places where the sheet rock will need to be replaced, but all in all...looks good!

Most of the living room got done too! There was a built in to the right of the fireplace that came out but we ran out of time and couldn't tear out the bar yet. This room was a bit more of a pain because 1/2 of the light switches were in metal boxes that had to be removed along with the switch plates. This made it twice as much work...but we got it!

Remember how dark and dreary it was BEFORE? Well look at it now:

The South wall sheet rock is in great condition but the north wall had a lot of glue and a little mold. The South wall does have those two square holes where built in speakers were, so those will have to be patched.

It is amazing how much lighter both rooms feel now! And bigger too!