Tapestry

Imagine a rug, a beautiful, multicolored work of art.  A tapestry of shapes and designs woven together by hand.  Details that took months, possibly years to create.  Then take that rug and begin to pull the fabric, sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently.  Then notice how the rug begins to separate, and the designs lose their meaning.

Working on and living in an old house is a little bit like that.  This is a little story of how I started pulling the tapestry apart and had to put it back together again.

It all started one day when the lights went out in the living room.  There were no issues in the electric panel, so I called over a good friend who just happens to be a master electrician.

Pulling off the ceiling fan in the living room we found our first problem.  There was no electrical box, only two holes drilled through the ship lap with two lone wires sticking through.

"It's most likely just a loose connection somewhere.  "The only problem is I can't get to anything, because it's all covered in ship lap," my good friend Dale Brewer said.  "You really need to get rid of that old wiring," he added.

The next day I started to expose the ceiling.  First came the painted wood paneling.  This came off relatively easily.  Just some light work with a hammer and a pry bar brought down the two foot square panels in just a few minutes. 

"Hey Julie, check out this wallpaper on the ceiling," I called.

Old wallpaper attached to cheesecloth entombed our ceiling.  Its cracked and dingy surface made it appear to be just barely hanging on.

Grabbing an open area I ripped, and the air of the room filled with years of dust and debris as if a West Texas dust storm had just barreled through.  Rat terds fell to floor like rain, and a strip of stained wallpaper dangled from the ceiling.  I had just transformed our living room into a haunted house.

Quickly shutting the doors and snagging a dust mask I finished the job.  It wasn't long before the ship lap ceiling was exposed, a board removed and we found the electrical culprit, which was quickly corrected.

"What do we do now?" Julie asked.  The ceiling had been covered for years and matched the fabric covered walls.

"Why don't we pull the fabric and batting off the walls?" she asked. "It smells like cat pee anyway,"

I frowned at her.  She must be kidding.  No way.  I glanced behind her and witnessed my Baylor Bears score yet another touchdown. The next thing I knew I was ripping fabric off walls like they were one gigantic Christmas present.

"Check this out!" I called.  "Old car wallpaper above the fireplace!"  As we continued we found two kinds of wallpaper.  One consisting of old cars, and another that looked like something like wood.


"Can you imaging what was going through their minds when they put this up? " I asked.  "I can just hear them saying, 'Let's cover these really cool real wood walls with wall paper that looks like wood,'"

Soon the paper was gone, and we sat in a living room covered floor to ceiling in rich, red ship lap that breathed in fresh air for the first time in years.

Unfortunately, our work had just begun.  You see, above this room sits our girls' bedroom.  Unknown to us when we bought the home, the floor sagged badly.  In fact, walking across it was like walking on a trampoline. There were no structural issue, only years of sagging from undersized and over spaced floor joists.

"Do you think we should fix it?" I asked Julie one night over a glass of Bordeaux.

Someone once told me that the following quote is always true when working on an old house.  "As long as you're doing this, you might as well do that too,"

We called our good friend and master of everything wood, Raymond Gonzalez.  He can truly do amazing things, and he always wants more money before he is done.

"From now on I'm going to call you, Quiero Mas," I once told him.  He just laughed and continued on.

Soon the real work began.  Walls shook, the house trembled, boards laid out in the yard like the carnage of war, and men covered our home, scurrying like ants on a mound.  Raymond exposed the floor joists, cut them and inserted two enormous beams spanning the room.  My good friend, Dale Brewer came over and fixed my electrical issue, and then Raymond put our room back together.

But that wasn't all.  No that was not all. Stringy cheesecloth covered the walls like someone tossed wet spaghetti everywhere.  Julie and I spent hours upon hours with a Bic lighter and a wet wash cloth, burning and wiping, burning and wiping, burning and wiping.

"Be careful, you're going to burn down the house," Julie said.

We debated a long time about painting the walls and finally decided on a light creme.  Our neighbor, Carol Scarborough, who has a knack for decorating, came by and helped us to dress it up just in time for Christmas.

Sitting in or new living room, broke and happy, Julie looked over at me.  "I feel very fortunate to live here,"

"Me too," I replied.  "Me too," I reached over and petted Cody dog.  He lay fast asleep, exhausted and very, very happy.