Demolition Derby

Over the weekend, Rob and I continued the project we accidentally started not too long ago when we tore up the hideous carpet on the stairs. Now, in that post I might have mentioned a few things we found that made us believe the people who installed that carpeting and paneling were a little...off. But nothing could have prepared us for the batshitcrazy that we found under the rest of the paneling when we took it down.

Behold the madness:

Yes, that is a railingish thing constructed from the old stringers which probably supported the original stairs. And yes, of course they seem to have much better construction than the current shoddily built stringers, which we will be replacing someday, when we're done taking the house apart.

See that blue? That is a HOLE in the wall between the stairs and the closet off of the den. When we took the paneling off of this section, that hole was stuffed with sixty-year-old underwear, but I was too grossed out to take a picture of it for you.

Here, you can see some different pieces of wood nailed at random to the wall for no apparent reason, as well as a part of the lovely antique beadboard that they managed to not destroy. Here, you can see where they built an entire closet out of that awful paneling. Around a window. So the sun can cheer up your sweaters when they start to get depressed about the long, dark winters. The door to this oddly-shaped and mostly useless closet was also nothing but paneling. Without a door, what use is a closet? Also, it's March, there was finally some sun, and we were on a roll letting some light into the hallway, so we took the closet out too. And the ceiling tiles after that. Luckily, we both had to work the next day, or our house would probably be in pieces.