A Pleasant Surprise!

It is a winter wonderland up north!  We got over a foot of snow over the weekend and were able to get in some great snowmobiling and relaxation time.  I went to the Packer game on Sunday while Ryan spent the day working at the house, and I'm glad I got out of helping on this one!

We recently decided to remove the paneling in the living room just to see whats underneath.  The thought of just covering it up was appealing, but we were a bit too curious to see what the house had originally.  

The room started like this:

The previous owners had started to cover up the paneling with dry-walling mud.  It wasn't a good look.  
After ripping off the paneling, Ryan found a layer of red and green wall paper that matches the wall paper on the stairs:

Ryan decided that wasn't a good look either and decided to go deeper.  He peeled of at least 2 other layers of wall paper to find old plaster with slats of wood that is found in older houses.  Beneath that...more wall paper.  This one in a nice shade of green with large leaves.  I can now see why a camel and Egyptian themed fireplace cover matched the room.  Finally, under that ugly green wall paper we have rough cut beadboard original to the house:

We are planning on keeping what we can.  Ryan was able to remove the plaster from one whole wall in about 5 hours.  We can see that the beadboard is under at least one other wall in the living room.  The last layer of wall paper was nailed on, so the wood has a lot of square nails put into it.  We are not entirely sure what we will do, but we are thinking it will need to be painted eventually.  It would be really nice to keep some of the original wood work in the house and most of it has already been removed by previous renovators.  This was a nice surprise to find under that ugly paneling and wall paper.  

It has been busy but things are moving along nicely.  Winter will be filled with more destruction than construction.  We will be ripping up the living room flooring to level the house and lay new flooring.  We will also be taking down the walls around the furnace so that we can get the furnace out and get a new one in later this summer.  We will be building a new room for the furnace with a door.  Right now it is in a bedroom closet and partly in the kitchen.  We will keep it there, but make it more accessible:

Overall, we had an amazing weekend with family and friends.  We hope you also had a great New Years and wish you a happy 2012!