Feb 25, 2024 3 min read

We're just discovered a window! Inside!

Demo reveals more surprises.

The breakfast nook before we started preparing the walls and ceiling for new drywall.

When we bought 615, the house next door to ours, about half the walls in the kitchen and all of the walls in the hallway to the kitchen were covered in thickly painted 1970s "paneling." In case you're not familiar with that kind of wall covering, it's basically thin pressboard with grooves. The ceiling was a drop ceiling, as shown in the photo above. It all made the kitchen feel dated and closed in.

To get ready for fresh drywall replacements, this weekend we had to pull out the paneling and drop ceiling. Then we moved on to preparing the back bedroom/office because of the same problems: thickly-painted "paneling" and a drop ceiling. Well, as we pulled off the paneling in the back bedroom/office, what did we discover but that the space between the breakfast nook and the back room had apparently once been a window!

The breakfast nook and back bedroom/office stripped down for the new drywall.

Here's a look from the back bedroom:

One theory is that the back room might have once been a porch, but who knows. In any case, it feels like an opportunity to get a little more light flowing around the space.

At first, we thought we should install a French-door style window. But Lisa the Design Genius is suggesting that we recreate shelving in the breakfast nook (kind of like it was before) but that we use the newly opened top space for a transom window, either clear or stained glass. This would definitely make the spaces feel more open and light. And it's much less expensive than adding a real window.

Without a doubt, new drywall for the ceiling and walls plus paint on the cabinetry is really going to freshen up the kitchen. Here's how things are looking now in the kitchen:

The door in the background goes to the living room. This photo is taken from the dining room door. The hallway to the right also leads to the basement stairs.

You can see the drop ceiling is gone, as is the "paneling."

Not unexpectedly, the demo revealed layers that included wallpapers gone by. Here's a groovy one that used to adorn the kitchen:

And here's one we found remnants of in the back bedroom office:

Can you see the sparkle? I think my mom would have loved this in the 1970s! It reminded me of the kitchen wallpaper we had when I was a kid:

Yes, I was sharing my birthday cake with the dog. Her name was Juno.

Yesterday, in the kitchen wall, besides dot-matrix Mao, we found a sealed letter from the prior owners from January 29, 1991. I texted them to ask if I should open it, and they said yes, as they had no memory of it.

Turns out it was a letter written to the future owners during a kitchen renovation. Enclosed was a quarter dated 1991 along with messages from the older son, mother, and father, all with touching thoughts about wishes for world peace and well wishes to future owners.

They decided we should put it back in the wall, so we're going to do that along with a letter from us explaining what we did in 2024.

More soon on what else happened this weekend. Right now I'm too pooped to say more!