Still Mostly Demo

We are still doing a lot of demolition.  We decided that since we are reframing all of the windows and moving a couple of walls, that it would probably be easier and cheaper in the long run to remove all of the paster walls in the house.  Sounds dramatic, but it makes replacing all of the electrical and plumbing in the house a lot easier.  It also allows us to see if there are any problems in the structure of the house. I tried to take some panoramic pictures of the first and second floors.

We also needed to pull all of the siding off the house.  We are replacing the old roof, so we needed to remove all of the rotting trim around the roof.  All of the rake boards and soffits need to replaced. The house looks a bit naked:

This picture is cool because you can see all of the different centuries of construction.  The first floor was built it the 1700, so you can see that the paneling was done with large 1" thick boards that were not totally straight, but were pieced together to cover the outside of the house.  The second floor on the main part of the house was built in the 1800s.  The boards still rough cut and thick, but they are narrower and more uniformed.  The little addition on the side was done about 50 years ago, and the planks are smaller and stacked tighter.  We also noticed, that the siding panels on the first floor are essentially the same size and shape as the huge floor boards in the old house.  We have to cut in to the back of the house on the first floor in order to put in the new french doors going out the back of the house, so I think we are going to pull the boards off the entire back wall.

 Here is a closer look at the back wall. You can see the planks are huge, some of them are up 19" wide.  We can take these planks and use them in the new kitchen, so that the floors in the new kitchen will match the old wide plank floors in the rest of the house.
On the other side of the house, I had friend of ours that is a carpenter/handyman help me frame and install a couple of the new windows.  The new windows are 12 over 12's (number of panes of glass in each window) and match the colonial style of the old windows.

It started to rain, but we were able to wrap part of the house, and frame and install three windows.  Next week, the roof on the main part of the house is going to get repaired and replaced.  The crew will also replace all of the rake boards and trim around the roof as well, as long as the weather holds.