Living Room, Part III, The Rebuild

So now you've seen the ugly truth hiding below the tiles...it's time to see what all that demo led to!

Once we had all the joists out, we cleaned all the debris off the dirt and replaced the sills:

Then it was on to new joists with vapor barrier below on the dirt:

We insulated between the joists so the floor wouldn't be so cold:

And layed new subfloor on top:

Now we had to deal with the ceiling.  It was covered in popcorn, there were several light fixtures we were removing and replacing, and the biggest problems of all-the ceiling was different where the closets were and there was a hole down the center where a faux beam had been.

This is the ceiling:

We had some choices.  Try to repair it, rip it all out, or leave it and cover it up.  We originally tried to cover it with 4x8 sheets of beadboard from the home store.  We got two pieces up and decided it looked awful. Then we talked about drywall, but thought it would look off in the room.  So we went with a product we've worked with before in our old house, tongue and groove pine planks.

By now, you're seeing the white washed paneling in the photos.  It's the same paneling, just sanded and white washed with Minwax Whitewash Pickling stain.  We DIDN'T follow the directions, which is why it has the vintage-y worn look.  We brushed it on, let it sit for 10-20 minutes then wiped it off with a towel.  It dried in some places and not in others, giving it that worn barnwood look.  It has to be done carefully, you don't have to use pressue when wiping the stain off, just let the towel run over the boards.

And now, the more recent "now" photos from the left corner to the right:

Next up, information on the cool stuff you're seeing in the now pictures, and the "what were they thinking" photos of the "framing" of the window you see in the last image.