Doorway

Part of the Secret Room project of turning it into a bathroom required that a new doorway be cut in the wall to allow access to the room, so that the wall of the closet could be closed up and walled over (remember, we cut the closet wall out to originally discover the room, and we are expanding the size of our closet as part of the project as well).

This shows the wall, after most of the wallpaper has been taken down. All that remained on this wall was the seams, which had been superglued down at some point (grrr...). The closet door is in the foreground.

Starting to cut into the wall where the door will go. Imagine my joy when I pulled off the plaster on the inside of the wall, and found out that a doorway was already framed in- it had just been covered up by plaster! The doorframe which went into the spot originally was also in the secret room, so all I had to do was cut the plaster off of both sides, and then put the old door frame in space. Up in the attic is the 5 panel door that would have originally gone here as well.

I am happy that not only did the old framing save me the work of framing in a new spot, but it also means that by putting this door in, we are actually returning to another original construction design on the house :-). Every time I pull down a wall and find an abandoned framed in doorway underneath, I feel like I am 'getting to know' our house more. I can better invision what it looked like when it was built almost 100 years ago.... Plus, I'm thrilled that this secret room project is finally really taking shape!

Steps!

When we first came to visit this house, one of the first things we noticed was that the porch and the steps would HAVE to be replaced! The steps had no railing, and the treads were so narrow that you couldn't fit more than half of your shoe on each one (much less sit comfortably on them!). We had planned on it being a project for this spring/ summer. However, after the first few snows, it became VERY evident that the old steps were not only ugly- there were DANGEROUS! Ice would drip off the porch roof and form on the steps. With them being so narrow and no railing, we had many adults and kids taking a trip down the stairs on their butts after slipping!

Old Steps! (@ Halloween time, hence the cobwebs on the house)

Our neighbor Brad took an afternoon and built us these beautiful new steps- with wider treads, and wonderful railings! Once again, I highly recommend his work, and we were amazed at how quickly he could build these- something that would have taken Jeff and I about 5 times the amount of time! We plan to paint them this spring, and are taking votes on whether they should be dark green like the old ones (to match the shutters), white like the house, or stained wood color. What do you think?