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March 2004  In the summer of 2002, my sister talked me into painting the living room
as an interim step since I had no plans to do anything to it in the
near future. In doing so, we covered up the ugly paneled wall
where the fireplace sits. Now, I've been distinctly un-fond of
the brick surround from the beginning as it's done with particularly
ugly raw-looking brick that can't possibly have been original and
skinny molding that probably did not begin life as a tree. But it
never occurred to me that The Great Paneling Project of 1963
might have reached so far as to mutilate the fireplace. I now
know that I badly underestimated the shocking bad taste of The Panelers
who shall remain nameless.As an extension of restoring the second-floor sleeping porch, and re-hanging the original french doors (currently in progress), the plan had called for restoring the trim on the doorways between the living room and the first-floor sunroom. No problem! Just rip down some more Evil Paneling, right? Wrong.  Feeling
pretty good about life, the house and everything, the day after
gleefully ripping down the Evil Paneling in The Cat Room, I got up
bright and early to get a start on the living room wall. I had
peeked behind there on many occassions in the last couple of years and
knew that the wall was a pretty awful baby blue, so that came as no
surprise. Working ever closer to the chimney, however, I rapidly discovered the lengths to which The Evil Panelers had gone: the brick on either side of the chimney looks as though it was hacked at willy-nilly with a chisel and a lot of brute force in order to make room for the structure The Panelers built to hold up their Evil Paneling. With the side paneling removed, I can see daylight all the way through the width of this 'structure' and the brick on both ends is chipped and chiseled in a good four inches from where it should end. bah!  The good news here is threefold (there's always good news for us Old House Suckers).
First: the ugly raw-looking brick surround was apparently built as its
own free-standing structure a half inch or so immediately in front of
the real fireplace - there's clear daylight between them.
It can therefore be demolished without damaging the original
brick. Second: the upper half of the chimney was originally
plastered. That wasn't touched by The Evil Panelers as it was
several inches narrower than the exposed brick below it. And
third: at least they didn't use flooring adhesive on this side of
the chimney!This brings me to a very interesting point. Old House people will frequently talk of 'listening' to a house; of throwing out your preconceived decorating and furnishing ideas and letting the house speak for itself, then ending up with a much more satisfying - albeit very different - result that what you started out to achieve. I've had glimpses of this previously, but nothing like what I'm starting to get from this house.  My
default taste in furnishing is pretty casual. I spent most of my
life on the west coast and in the southwest, and formal living rooms
and dining rooms, don't do much for me. But looking at the
ceiling moldings in the dining room, then knowing they originally
matched in the living room, around the plastered chimney, I can start
to see the house as it was in its heyday: comfortable, but much more
formal than I would ever go by default. It
may sound a little crazy to look at a 4-foot wide white strip at the
top of a wall where the molding once was and start to think that your
furniture is all wrong for the room, but that's what hits me now that
the house has started to show its bones.The mutilated fireplace can be restored, probably with a wrap-around mantel and some plaster restoration. My GC loves work like this, and we're already talking about tackling it later this year. Of course, that's that much longer before the kitchen can be put out of its misery. |
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This page last updated on March 28, 2004. © 2004 PGE, Ltd., All Rights Reserved. |
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