Chimney Room

Also no longer has a chimney!


This is the unfinished room that sits between the laundry area and the second floor of the barn. We definitely had several families of squirrels nesting in the ceiling of it (we could hear them all winter), and it had no windows.

But no longer! Dan demo-ed out the plywood ceiling and took out all the yucky insulation.

taken from the barn side

 

taken from the laundry side

 

It's actually a pretty big space, but the silly chimney was smack in the middle and making it feel quite cramped. Now, this is the chimney from and to nowhere. It's resting on top of the wall between the kitchen and the living room (doesn't go down to the basement/foundation like a normal chimney) and probably vented a wood stove in the kitchen once upon a time. Since it wasn't serving any purpose, we had the top part of it (going out the roof) taken out last summer due to home insurance issues and a few weekends ago, we took it out completely.

For some reason, we thought I would carry out bricks and Dan would do the chiseling, but we quickly realized, there was no way I could haul all those bricks (and I was a lot faster at chiseling).

halfway done

Dan re-enacting how he lugged bricks out through the barn. His back was very very sore for a few days. We gave away those bricks via craigslist to a very happy homeowner whose house foundation got washed out from all the rain.

It's surprisingly spacious. We're thinking a den!

 And the natural light issue? We got our roofers to put in two skylights for us. AHHH!!!!!! They're so so so SPECTACULAR. You should've seen how much I bothered the roofers about them: "When are you going to get to the skylights?" Roofers updating me on their progress and how they'll finish ___ by ___: "and then the skylights?" Roofers asking me how I like the new vent: "Looks good. When do I get my skylights?" Roofers asking me how does the roof look: "pretty nice. No crumbling is good. No moss is good. Do you think you'll get to the skylights by Friday?"

They were a little disappointed by my ho-hum reaction to the roof, but I delivered for the skylights: "THEY LOOK FREAKING AMAZING!!!!!!!"

To have natural light where before it was pitch black feels pretty darn good. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll get to finishing this room for a while, as we're going to be focusing on the kitchen pretty soon. Like demo starts in a few weeks.