wallpaper – The Hermits' Rest

We never know what we will find at the Pope house, which is probably true any time you renovate an old place like this. Examples include the arched opening between Lee and Kathleen’s offices and the window in my office that faces out into the hallway, which told us that was once an exterior wall.

The opening to the left of the ladder was hidden behind plaster and the scary staircase that used to be in the central hallway. Surprise!

Today we found another great surprise. Randy has been upstairs removing the wallpaper and other things from the walls in 3 of the 4 upstairs rooms. The room for Meghan’s office is fine as is. The one above Lee’s office has some trim to take down. We are making that the conference room, since it’s the biggest room. We’ll paint it the terracotta color we used on the back downstairs wall.

The future conference room. The carpet has been removed and most of this stuff is gone. The floor under the carpet is great. All we have to do is paint the walls.

The last room is the future storage room. It had wallpaper on every wall, all of which had water damage. Even the ceiling had wallpaper on it, which looked pretty darned awful. So, it had to go.

This shows the wallpaper on the ceiling. Ick.

I went upstairs to see what was going on, and saw that Randy had just gotten started. What? The walls weren’t plastered in that room; they are just shiplap! And wait a minute…the ceiling isn’t the brown beadboard that the other three rooms have. Whoa.

When I first saw the wall and a glimpse of the ceiling.

The minute I realized what the room would look like, I made sure Kathleen had seen it, too. Randy was sure to inform us that Lee said he would put drywall on the walls, so we’d better not contradict the boss. Ha ha, we laughed. We all have a say in this project!

Note that there was once a stove in the room. That hole goes to the chimney.

At lunch we showed these photos and explained how we’d love to keep it in its original shape. Of course, Lee and Chris were fine with it (duh, it will save money for Lee and time for Chris!).

It’s a fascinating collection of colors, but pretty coll on the ceiling.

This happy news made up for the fact that we don’t get the Big Sander until tomorrow, which delays the floor starting. Our trusty team will just have to work on the weekend, meaning I’ll get to help, too.

Here are some more photos of the room, freshly devoid of wallpaper. It should clean up nicely.

Three colors of ceiling.
This is the closet door. To the right is a door that leads to Meghan’s office. Convenient.
All the upstairs rooms have nice transoms.
Remnant of one of the previous wallpapers that were on the walls. I guess they never had plaster.
Looking out of the room
These windows were once exterior windows and are original. Now they look out on the stairwell.