upstairs porch - the (slow) start

Home projects around here are slow, but they do get finished (and, need I add, all paid up along the way).  I took some "before" pictures of our little upstairs porch back in May, when we started thinking about what we'd finally do with the space.

Five months later we started on demolition, and now it sits, patiently waiting!

This room, with no insulation and its crumbly walls, most always has been used for various storage.  More than likely it was a sleeping porch when built, and when the windows are open here and at the front of the house, we get a lovely breeze east/west;  we certainly appreciate how well these old houses are set up, making do without air conditioning.

We don't let the kids much play here, due to the flaking paint (and cold, six months out of the year), but every once in a while I'd come back here to read or knit.

Finally we decided that the best use of this space would be a small guest room, just big enough for the double bed (a well-made futon) we currently use in the library/tv room, plus a little chair and table or small dresser, and maybe even a bookcase (of course!).  I am also excited to someday have a new couch for movie watching, reading, and game playing where we currently use the futon in its bed form.

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Demolition was Jeff and a crowbar, pretty much entirely.  I don't mind helping, but we knew the work was going to be filthy and would take all day, never mind that there really is not room for two people to work (one of them swinging a crowbar) in this small space.  So I stayed clean, worked around the house, and brought Kaatje to her basketball game.

We did some final clean-up work a couple weeks ago:  pulling the nails left from the lathe, pulling down more tar paper, getting the plaster out of the crack where the floor meets the walls.

There's always surprises!

Jeff was wondering if he'd find what we found above, and he was right. 

This porch is attached to the back of the house, above our downstairs back porch (not to be confused with the downstairs front porch.. yeah, I know).  We don't know exactly when the porches were added, but this used to be the east exterior wall, and above is proof of the matching symmetrical window to the one still there (which goes into a tiny-but-larger-than-a-closet storage room).

None of the porches were insulated, all had single-pane double hung windows without any weatherproofing, none had heat.

I'm kind of sorry (but also relieved) to say were now considering removing this remaining window.  Like I said, it goes into a storage area, is useless, would be hard to refinish and match to the new drywall, etc, etc.  It's also more than likely lead paint (over beautiful thick oak, of course).  And really, aren't there enough windows on this porch?!  I will be happy to have those two little sections of wall to utilize.

The ceiling here is under eight feet, just by a bit.  Kaatje took one look above the rafters and immediately requested a tiny play loft, but we measured, and the peak would be under four feet, with a drastic slope down from there (not to mention the freezing cold and boiling hot it would experience under the roof).

We talked her out of it, but did decide to raise the ceiling just a bit.  There might even be room for a ceiling fan!  ...but then I won't get the chandelier I was hoping for!

I won't get in to the structural problems we discovered (there's always bad surprises, too, in a 100-year old house), but we expected as much after doing the porch below this one.  We're honestly not sure what the people who built this were thinking sometimes (all the time), but Jeff will have to do a chunk of work before we can think about moving on with wiring, insulation, windows, and everything else that makes a room a room.  How about that light hanging job above, where they drilled through a joist to push the wires through?!  Don't mind that it's the center of a structural beam!  Please don't ask about any of the framing.

Remember this was the outside wall?  Here's the original roof line with the original stucco.  I get a kick out of that little decorative wood piece under the eaves.

And check out that wiring job!  The knob and tube wiring cracks me up:  they had to run that precious wire the shortest distance possible, often taut to the light.

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So here's to the start of a new project, which is tied to more projects as usual.  We'll probably change our plans multiple times along the way, both little things and big, but it's fun to see where we start.