Tear Down

All winter long I have been dreaming of the day I could begin to remodel my kitchen. My original plans were drawn up last winter, when there was still at least a foot of snow in the yard. They were erased, redrawn, erased again, and in the end, pared down quite a bit. One thing remains true to the original plan – rip down the paneling that has two layers of wall paper glued to it and put some drywall up!

I had one request for my husband. “Can you get me a crow bar, please?”

Much to my surprise, he actually came back from the shop with two. One was terribly greasy and heavy – it looked like something that could do some serious damage. The one I chose was lighter in weight with a cool orange handle. I thought to myself – if you don’t just do this now, it will never get done. After all, I know very well how intended projects go in this household.

I called Mickey in from the living room. “Would you please carry these coats down to the basement and hang them on the coat hooks at the bottom of the stairs?” I took the coat rack down. I moved the storage cabinet and bench to the other side of the room.

The trim around the doorway was so loose, it practically fell off. The wooden wallpaper-laden paneling came down in nice big sheets, exposing the old exterior house wall. Hey, this eating area used to be a porch! Look, that’s probably where the front door was. And next to it, a window. A few scribbles of an old green color crayon decorated the old and well-worn wood. I wonder who left me this art? A little boy that lived here? Or a little girl? These mysteries of yester year entangle in my brain. I called to Mickey again, “Hey, come in here. See this? You should get a marker and sign your name on this board too, before we cover it up.” Her name … is now preserved in time.

Ripping off paneling and trim pretty quickly, and rounding the corner to the current exterior house wall – guess what? Underneath all that paneling was drywall. The excitement mounted. Could this be true? Nothing good like this ever happens to me! Awesome! As I try to piece together this puzzle of days gone by – how this used to look, why they covered it up like they did, I really find myself wondering – if there is drywall under here, why in the world did they cover it with paneling? Why not texture and paint it like the rest of the house? I was tempted to call the people we bought this place from to ask. But I didn’t.

Oh, and by the way, my husband helped me take the last two pieces down. If by chance, at that moment, you had stopped in to visit, I would imagine you would have seen him standing there with the crow bar in his hand and thought – it sure is nice of you to do that for your wife.

But now you know the real story.