Vigas Everywhere!!
I ripped out three rooms worth of drop ceilings today and tore holes in the front/gallery room and the kitchen ceilings. There are vigas everywhere!! The entire house is original adobe, most likely over a hundred years old. The adobe is the old, traditional kind, with straw mixed in. The only thing added on was the garage—which will be Leonardo’s workshop.
Tomorrow I’ll finish taking down the ceilings in the front room and kitchen and remove the firring strips—the 1” x 4” boards nailed to the underside of the vigas that the drop ceilings were attached to.
We have agreed that the front bedroom will be our office(s), the second and third bedrooms will become the master suite. We’ll knock out most of the wall separating them and put in a large arched opening between the 2. That’ll be our bedroom and kick-back room. Sofa, TV. We’ll have double doors in the archway (or curtain) to separate the spaces when we wish.
The hallway is useless space—we’re extending the bathroom out past the one bedroom door we’re eliminating from the master suite. On the outer hallway wall we’re knocking another hole and putting in another arched opening. Cause the wood stove was in the hallway! Duh. So we’ll put the woodstove in the same spot (cause that’s where the existing stovepipe is) but we’ll turn it around to face into the gallery and it will live in that arched opening. That’ll facilitate the heat/air flow through the whole house, and be a lot prettier and let a lot more light back there. What was once the hallway's back wall will become another place for showcasing artwork.
The door we're keeping for the master suite will be widened and shaped--yep, another archway. We will hand-build a double-door that is split down the middle as our entrance to that room. Oh yeah, so 'southwesty.'
In the nasty bathroom ALL fixtures will be replaced. We’ll knock out a weird little storage closet at the foot of the existing tub which, once said tub is removed, will allow room for the new (old) clawfoot tub.
Leonardo pulled up a bunch of icky carpet today and found an oak floor underneath in the front/gallery room. Well, except for the 4’ x 8’ plywood patch in the corner. Grandpa Del told us that the former owners had torn up the floor to burn in the wood stove. Sounds crazy, but both the former owner and his brother, who owned the place next door, died of drug overdoses. So there you have it. Maybe that sort of thing makes sense when you’re high. We’ve found someone in Santa Fe renovating their house and they have oak floor to spare. So we’re running down to take a look tomorrow. In any case, that corner is a prime spot for a kiva fireplace—so we could brick in that area.
A kiva fireplace will also go into the master suite.
I just love this stuff. I could SO be a house flipper.
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