When you own an old house, there is always a house project in the works. Right now it is our office/library/computer room. This is what the room looked like when we moved in. It was renovated in the 60’s or 70’s and they covered over the horsehair plaster walls with wood from a local tanning facility. The wood was really dark and had little holes all over it from hanging hides to dry. It makes for a kind of interesting story but the room was dreadfully dark and the walls were really rough and hard to clean. And there was an ugly orange/red carpet. We promptly pulled up the smelly carpet and have been living with a strange brown chipboard kind of floor for the past 4 years. We weren’t sure if the wood floor below could be saved.

When the floor was ripped up, it was still covered in a paper material but we could tell that with some patching, the floor could be saved. We replaced the walls with wall board and painted and replaced the old replacement windows.

I love exposed beams in the ceiling but the beams in the before room were fake, and obviously so. They were removed and we added a new beam. This beam was found at a local salvage yard and looks like the beams used when building our 1840s house. We couldn’t expose our actual beam due to the height of it and the need to level the ceilings so we attached this beam to the house beam so it could be exposed.

The floors have been patched and refinished and look like the floors in our living room and dining room. It was definitely a nice surprise!

We ordered two school house style lights that are appropriate for the age of our house and here is one hanging. The other isn’t in yet. It’s the same but smaller.
We still have a lot of work left to do. We need baseboards and trim around the windows but first the radiant floor heating needs to be put in place because it is getting chilly in here! We have plans to build an L shaped bench by the bay of three windows with a table. That end will be a sitting room, and the office will be on the other end of the room. I am looking forward to moving furniture back into this room and settling the house a bit again.