To our home’s successors,

We started making mistakes in May of 2019 by gutting the horsehair plaster walls. 

Let me back up just a bit, and share why we started in this room…

Need I say more? 

Our experience was extremely limited, so we started by taking down wallpaper… this was a waste of time, but here we are…. 

Next, we bought a massive pry bar and started going at the walls. I’ll admit this was fun, but it was MESSY. (if you ever feel you truly NEED to do this. 1. Think again, but 2. Wear a shower cap or something to keep it out of your hair) and of course full PPE.

After cleaning this up- with bags and bags…. And more contractor bags the lath followed in June of 2019 with the help of Taylor’s dad.

It was at this point we had Mass Save come out to see what sort of aid they could provide in terms of making this house more energy efficient in its current state…

I’ll go off on small tangent about how horrible this time was-

Mass Save guy comes out- tells us he can’t help us because we have several rooms open and that makes us a “new build” …. Yes a 150+ year old house is *new*. They wouldn’t be able to do insulation because of the knob-and-tube, oh and last thing…. We may have asbestos in the insulation we took down out of the ceiling when we gutted the room. Which we were told we did not have at our home inspection but apparently it was buried under a layer of blown-in insulation…

A lot of panic ensued. 

And then we carried on. 

 *to be clear, there is no proof of this- the likelihood that the vermiculite insulation contained asbestos is extremely small because only 1 plant creating it contained it and it was for such a brief amount of time*

Our electrician helped hook us up with a carpenter to do our drywall as it was now the start of winter and we wanted this room insulated and put back together before it got too cold. Drywall went up finally in January of 2020. The plaster that was removed was variable in thickness and therefore the crown molding was a challenge to put back in place. You’ll find some awkward seams. The walls were originally so thick with plaster that we needed to double up the drywall to take it’s place. We did our best to hide the awkward seams in the crown molding…This is one of the many reasons you shouldn’t rip out old plaster… the trim will never go back the same.

We redid the sash cords ourselves in March of 2020. This was not fun. And at this current time, we need to do it again because A. we didn’t actually reglaze the windows and that needs to be done, B. the sashes should be painted to be protected, and C. we have since discovered spring bronze weather stripping- more on that later. Whenever you have to do this again, please watch as many tutorials as you can, and then watch more…. But you’ll probably learn best by just doing it. PS the window weights are solid iron and extremely difficult to hold through the little pockets- be careful.

April we finally primed, and 3 months later the room was painted. Last of the curse was the plaster coated, worn, shag carpeting which we pulled out in July. But the curse didn’t stop there. No. Because why would carpeting ever be installed with just tack strips around the perimeter? No- we need Glue! Or mastic! Or some other substance that’s impossible to remove. Taylor spent 4 months trying everything to save the beautiful floors by hand before finally succumbing to the inevitable.

We rented a floor sander- orbital. And with the help of Taylor’s dad, who is extremely German and needed everything consistent, we got the floor down to bare wood. I’m sorry- this was probably the last time it could be sanded as you’ll see we were getting down to the grooves. 

There was a lot of back and forth on the finish, but we ultimately decided to stain it dark, and finish it with shellac and a few coats of wax.

So for the next lesson learned in this- condition your bare wood! Taylor and her mom walked in socks to clean up all the saw dust thinking we wouldn’t track in dirt before staining…. Guess who’s footprints show up through all that stain? Yep. Don’t think that just because your feet don’t feel sweaty, that means there’s no sweat or oil. CONDITION YOUR BARE WOOD!

So we spent several hours trying to tactfully sand out these footprints all over the room- they’re obviously still there. You’re welcome for that bit of character. 

Floors were shellacked with 2 coats and waxed and buffed with 2 coats finishing up in December of 2020.


This room is still not *complete* as of August of 2023- This is a reminder to all, masterpieces learning projects are never fully finished.

Footnotes: Paint wall color: Behr Global Green, Paint trim color: Sherwin Williams Acadia White (left over from previous homeowner), Ceiling paint: Behr ceiling paint- no color added, floor stain: Varathane Espresso shellac: bullseye shellac – clear wax: SC Johnson paste wax