Back to the show

All that was left now was to demo the butler stairs and upstairs hall. No real surprises here. I did the upstairs hall since this would be the ideal time to run all my wires for thermostat, doorbell, smoke alarms, and 3-way / 4-way switches for the various lights that will be switched between here and various locations downstairs.

At this point when you walked in the front door, it was possible to see all the way through to the back door - maybe we were taking the concept of the modern "great room" a bit to far! But really, at this point you're thinking "what the *#$! was I thinking???!"

.... Can I put this back together???

nice mantel, but... is something missing?

So ends the first phase of the work downstairs - I now have a "clean" slate to start putting things back the way they were, or at least should be. I have already started accumulating pieces including a great oak mantel that fit like a glove and an old Humphrey gas insert. It appears there originally was a full size insert that covered the opening, but the Humphrey will fill the void for now.

During the demo I did find some neat items (other than underwear) mostly under the stairs where paper items fell between the riser and step joint. One in particular was a library slip that was dated 1966 and gave me what was most likely the 2nd owner's last name - Anderson. Also thrown in the walls during construction were several milk bottle caps... better than beer caps I suppose. I put one back in the wall in an envelope with a note telling about how it was found and a date.

mik caps, button, Johnson & Johnson can

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library slip, valentines, x-mas tag, paper doll, matches,

Gillette blades, hair pin, receipt (1947)

game pieces