ready...set...crowbar

         And so it begins....Hallelujah! Saturday afternoon/evening, my persistent nagging, prodding, guilting, and begging finally came to a head and Chris realized that it was as good a time as any to start the renovation of our "master bedroom". I put that in quotes because we have been sleeping in the smallest room in the house since we moved in last March (its legit measurements are 8'x10') so we would be out of the way for the renovation of the master bedroom, which we planned on doing ASAP last spring. Well, life definitely happened.. We were busy planning a wedding that pretty much took up most of our spring and summer.. then we went on a honeymoon for 8 days.. then we had all sorts of stuff going on with the cattle, etc., etc. In the course of our marriage so far, we have had many discussions about starting a family and what time would be right for us. We also discussed a number of loose ends that need to be tied up before we make that leap and renovating that master bedroom of ours sat pretty high up on that list. I argued that if we didn't do it soon/now, it would never get done. As life goes by, our free time becomes less and less. Add to that Chris's ever growing cow herd (if all of our cows have healthy calves this year, we will have 101 cows. We started with 20 a couple years ago) and all of the work that comes with it, and then plop a baby into that picture and its starting to look like "what renovation?".

please excuse the crappy photos.. the plaster dust/low light didn't make for the best conditions

        The first step that needed to be taken, in regards to the disassembly of the room, was to CAREFULLY remove and disassemble the, in my opinion, gorgeous woodwork/trim/mouldings. The woodwork in that room is the only moulding in the house that could be considered by anyone to have beauty. The addition to the house that contains that room was built around 1917, so it definitely has some character. The rest of the house was built many decades before that in the 1860s (click here for more details on our old, old home) so the trim in every other room is handmade and very very "plain jane". Chris saw this as a headache waiting to happen and insisted that I consider buying new trim. I stood firm and I'm glad I did because half of the room is devoid of trim now and we didn't split ANY boards!!!

the floral wallpaper was the 3rd layer in when we were removing the paper. There were 5 layers total.. ugh.

         On Saturday, I printed out directions from Old House Online and made a list of tools. Anything we didn't have, we bought, although we had most everything already.  When we got home Chris sat down with his brother and dad to relax and watch some tv. I went straight up to the room and not 10 minutes later, he made his way up there,too, coaxed by my hammering a chiseling. Within a couple of hours we had half of the room done (thanks to the big yellow crowbar we bought even though it wasn't on the list). After we get all of the woodwork removed we are going to take hammers and more crowbars and beat and rip the living tar out of the plaster and lath that are the walls of the room. Following that monster of a job, we will insulate, put a few more outlets in, and drywall up the room.

yes, its a little bit stained and discolored but that's nothing that a good sanding and refinishing can't fix

          I am going to strip the thick, crackled varnish off so we have a fresh surface to apply new stain. The room also has beautiful douglas fir wood flooring underneath of the carpet. So far we've only seen the corners of the room and the closet floor, but it looks like its definitely worth saving. We hope to stain the floors and woodwork to match. I'm just so, SO ecstatic that we've finally started this big project! I hope everyone had a lovely weekend

original window trim

original base board