One thing that was clear from the first moment I set eyes on The Queen, is that she has taken a bit of a beating over the years.
Some of the folks had good intentions.
But everyone just kept doing odd things to her and then putting band-aids over her boo boos
Or as my son likes to say “Put lipstick on a pig”
We are only on the 2nd floor right now and some of the stuff I come across really amazes me
And not in a good way.
Today, I will talk about her upstairs flooring.
Primarily, Restoring The Floors at Victorian By The Bay
Interestingly, when they built this home, they put the floors in first
Then built the walls on top of the floors.
Here you can see that the floors go all the way through from 1 room to the next.
It is incredible to know that in most rooms each plank was all 1 long length and not pieced together like we do nowadays.
Look how GORGEOUS this original wood is. It could be close to 200 years old.
It’s almost 1″ thick. Clear Vertical Grain
So here is the most problematic room.
The Master bedroom.
My God, were they trying to hide bodies under the floor in this room?
All around the entire room, everywhere there was an outlet, someone cut out a good chunk of flooring
Here is a close up of the botch job they did.
Plywood was roughly fitted in where large sections of the original floorboards were removed
What a mess of cut up and patched boards everywhere.
And here’s the floor in the Master bedroom opened up,
Thankfully NO BODIES!
As you can see here, when they did the electrical,
They just cut open floor boards where ever they felt like it.
And did a crummy job of putting them back
And in some cases they just used a different piece of wood.
All that damage to run a couple of electrical lines to the ceiling below
I would have broken open the ceiling!
Instead of committing such a travesty on the poor Queen’s floor boards!
Oh, this is much better. Below is that same hole repaired.
And here is a look at the hallway facing the outside door where it’s all cut up.
And now that it is repaired, The floor is really stable now
Quite a long stretch of new wood!
This is in the upstairs landing near the balcony French door
Repair job using some of the original wood pulled up from another area.
Here is a look at the new Master Bathroom, which was a nice bedroom
That backed up to the Master bedroom.
When they did the plumbing for the original bathroom that backs up to this room,
they ripped up one full length of a board and replaced it with wood that was not as thick
And now repaired and level with the rest of the floor.
The line you see going across the floor from gray to brown is just layers of old paint, and also where the old closet was.
The boards are not cut there.
You can see the plumbing coming out of the floor in front of the window
where my beautiful claw-foot tub will reside
Here’s more of the patch work
And More!
I think for this post, the pictures really tell the story.
I will tell you, I just can’t wait for the pretty stuff to start happening.
We have had so much rain here in So Cal.
It’s quite a muddy mess.
If you noticed a bit of water on the floors in front of the windows
You are not seeing things!
The rain blows in thru the plastic sheeting that is stapled to the upstairs windows.
Next time I hope to have the rest of the insulation done
And if luck is winking my way I might actually have some drywall up
For those of you who have been following along, you’ve already met Buddy
He is my little Construction Cat
Buddy adopted me from the alley where someone saw fit to abandon or dump him
He has been suffering from Stomatitus (Gum Disease) as well as a bad cold
He has grown quite attached to me and I love him dearly as well.
Yesterday he had surgery to remove all of his teeth, except the long canines.
The steroid shots he was getting were no longer alleviating his pain.
I will be picking him up soon from the hospital.
I feel blessed to have him here
He loves strutting around the house
And tearing up and down the stairs as fast as he can
Thanks again for checking out the lastest goings on at Victorian By The Bay!
If you missed the last post, go check out how all the green goo got in the walls
When we added Spray Foam Insulation to all exterior walls
