We are busy bees!

Friday was our first show at the Muny, Oklahoma!. It was such a fun show and both Mark and I had a great time. We got season tickets this year, so we've got Friday night dates almost all summer. :)

Saturday was ALL DAY at the house. Whew. Hard, hard work, but it's so much fun to see the changes and to make all of the little discoveries along the way. I have some pics from Saturday but they haven't made it onto the computer yet.

On Saturday, we pulled down the rest of the dropped ceilings from the front two bedrooms--yucky, nasty work as plaster falls on our heads. We are wearing dust masks designed for drywall and plaster work to try to keep as much debris out of our lungs as possible. Basically we have areas where the plaster ceiling has collapsed onto the dropped ceiling below, so as Mark is pulling the ceiling tiles out and handing them to me they are covered with very heavy, crumbly, OLD plaster--complete with horsehair. The horsehair is an additive to give the plaster more substance, and is even used today when people are trying to repair or replicate old plaster. I'll post some pics of the holes in the ceiling a bit later.

We also finished pulling out the closets in the front bedroom--that was actually fun! The walls were made of normal 2x4 studs, but instead of actual wood of some kind for the walls they had nailed luan (a very thin plywood) to the studs. The best way to take it off? Kick and punch it off!! Seriously!! You stand inside the closet and kick off the luan panels. Ahh...stress relief. We really should have gotten some pictures of me doing that, but I think Mark was a little more concerned with where the luan was flying to across the room than taking pictures. ;) However, here is a picture of the closets before I attacked them:

After kicking out the walls, we removed the studs which were framing out the closets and it was a lot like cutting down trees--take a few screws and bolts out and watch to see which way the whole contraption was going to fall. It really was a riot--we had a great time tearing out those closets. The rest of the day Saturday was spent removing baseboards as carefully as possible. We'd like to try to keep as much of the original woodwork as possible, especially because we now think it may be VERY original...as in say 1890 or so. I'll post some pics as to why we think it's so old.