This is the room, with all its secrets, when we bought the building.
Finally, the two grand pianos are gone, the metal recycling is gone, all the things people wanted, they came and picked up. The permit from the city, Zac went and got. The contractors came out, they bid on the job. The contractors came out, they wouldn’t bid on the job. This is just the kind of nasty work that people don’t bid on. Once they see the building, even if they say, THIS IS SUPER COOL, MAN!, what they mean is GOOD LUCK! LOSE MY NUMBER. YOU COULDN’T PAY ME ENOUGH MONEY TO DO THIS JOB. So we took the room that looked like this when we bought the building:
This is what the room looked like once we moved all the stuff, and tore off the faux marbled panelling on the wall….
We knew the floors were a little spongy, but really, I had no idea how under those wall decorations was a whole host of MAJOR TERMITE DAMAGE!!!! I wonder secretly to myself how this could happen….
We managed to get all the floor joists out in one day. I know that sounds massive, but really, by the time the termites have eaten 60% of the board, there just isn’t all that much left to haul away! This room was wrecked. I remember with the other room we would sometimes feel guilty, looking at these big old, long wide 100 year old boards, saying, can we really throw these away? But this job left no room for doubt. The boards were disgusting!!!
Here is what the room looked like by quitting time….
Down to the DIRT!
The bonus of the day happened at the end, when I was piddling around tearing stuff off the walls (a totally addictive  pastime) and I found a WINDOW!! Not in perfect shape, but somewhat in tact. You might say, ICH!!! Tear that out and get something new!!! But as for the historic status of this building, you are to renovate what you can. Which speaks my language, as renovating an old window is a whole lot easier than ordering up a six foot tall window and installing it. Not to mention cheaper. SO everyone ends up happy.
What are YOU doing here????