The Grand BEFORE House Tour! (Part 1)

Hello my people!
Won't you come in?
Of course you will, I have Diet Dr.Pepper in the fridge! (Diet Coke for you, Ma.)



Front door with dentist-office-grade glass block sidelight.


Let's move out of the Land of 1000 Suns entry with all that magnificently faceted glassblock.
A view from the stair landing:



Is that a boob light you see glowing there? Why, yes it is!

 The past remodeling efforts to our sweet MulberryHill House have created a patchwork of oddly shaped and placed rooms. And you thought patchwork was only being applied to the floor, ceramic tile-style, in baby blue with itty-bitty, baby blue tiled baseboards! Silly!

I am very excited that our current project is taking up all this tile (and those baseboards). I'll have a before and after post on that in the next week or so. (Unless a wayward tile shard takes me out. Those suckers are as sharp as razors. Maybe I should teach the boys how to post...?)

In the picture above you can also see part of the staircase which is showing it's own "renovation" scars. The treads and risers are covered in engineered wood planks and finished along the tread edge with decorator basic moulding trim. Not very sturdy. (The trim, I mean. Not the stairs. Those seem to be able to take a beating. Many beatings.)
Other than those wood planks, which were pre-finished, all the other wood elements on the stairs appear to have been installed unfinished and hastily schmeared with some kind of rosewood-color stain.

The staircase renovation is going to be super fun because we're exploring the possibility of taking down this wall:


The wall on the right side of the picture, where the banister connects: Adios? I say YES!



And, Ma, we all know a dude's favorite magic phrase when they don't want to talk about tearing out walls:

LOAD BEARING

Oh, no! Anything but THAT!


And, shoot, it might actually BE load bearing. So far, a couple of engi-nerds (as my friend, Angie, calls 'em) have given the wall a thump and kicked the tires a little and proclaimed that it just might NOT be load bearing, so here's hoping. Of course, the engi-nerds I'm referring to are my hub and Angie's, so maybe I have to get a third opinion.

Another view of the stairs.

But, just imagine how pretty a proper stair railing would look if it followed that staircase up to the second floor landing and didn't dead-end, like a bug against a windshield, on that wall. Picture it! (Sicily, 1943. A little GG reference for you, Ma.)

Wow, 4 pictures and a wad of descriptions and we're still in the entryway (foy-yay, for the fancypants people).

On to Part 2 tomorrow, then!
G'nite Ma!

Smooches and Squeezes,
Amanda