Pride & Prejudice

Ok, it has nothing to do with my house but I just saw the movie last night so I thought I use it as a blog title. What does it say about me when a movie based on a Jane Austen novel and the HBO series Deadwood are the two things that have me on the edge of my seat.

Anyway, I’m almost finished demoing the butler’s pantry and scullery. The butler’s pantry was the only room in the house where the plaster was removed and sheetrock put up. It was then painted a zillion times. The last owners used this room a lot and they smoked a lot. The woman had a plate collection or a number of round photos hanging on the wall and where each one was there was a yellow outline from the nicotine. Pretty nasty. There idea of fixing up the dining room, which adjoins the butler’s pantry, was to put in 2 Lazy Boys, 2 ash trays, and a big screen TV. Then they parked their keisters there and smoked and watched TV for a year and a half until they sold the place to me. They did almost nothing else with the house. In a way that’s kind of a good thing because they could have hacked the house up bad had they been more ambitious or had more money.

The scullery is almost floor to ceiling bead board, except one wall that was opened to make the butler’s pantry and scullery more like one room. This was done back in 1915 when Mrs. Petch turned the dining room, butler’s pantry and scullery in to her apartment. The rest of the bedrooms where for boarders. The one wall that is not bead board is plaster above 48-inch bead board. I think this is how the whole room was originally. During the 1915 modification they pushed the back wall of the scullery out 12-inches. Seems like a lot of work for just 12-inches. I think I know why they did it but I won’t go in to it now. There will be many more posts about the scullery in weeks to come. For now, though, I will say that the weirdest thing someone did to the scullery was to put wood grained sheetrock over wood bead board. That was done in the 50s.

So anyway, the sheetrock had to go first. I can now open up the wall where the drain is for the bathroom above is and fix that. Before I do that, though, I just want to get all the crap out. A lot of it is good crap but it all must go. Before I could get the crap out I had to make room for it someplace else. I straightened up - straightened up may be too strong a term – I stacked the piles differently in one of the garages to make room for all the pieces of trim and door jambs that ended up in the scullery for the last few years. It takes 9 pieces of wood for the trim and jamb of a door. The addition had 7 doors. That is 63 boards just for the doors. It is amazing how much wood it takes to build a house.

You know, maybe that blog title isn’t so far off. I take Pride in the work I do on the house and I’m Prejudice against people who didn't in the past.