There is a lot going on in the house at Fort Pelham Farm.  We decided to turn the old bathroom into a pantry for now and the library will become a bedroom for my Dad who will be moving home in about 6 weeks.  Yes, you guessed right, I will be in Rowe full-time starting in May.  Not exactly the circumstances I had always envisioned but right now it is what it is.

This is the lovely bathroom that we used for years and years.  It was time for it to go and boy was Bill excited about this project (not).

He pointed out that this is the glory part of home improvement – removing the toilet.  Chester is making sure he is doing it properly.

Okay, I primed everything – don’t judge, we still have a ways to go.

Initial painting is done – the shelving I will be building this week.  Another coat of paint still on tap but the project is moving along.

Did I tell you that I have dozens and dozens of jars of canned goods sitting on the floor in the living room right now with no home?  Yeah, nice decor.  That’s because they were stored in the library.  All of that shelving had to come down to make room for Dad on the first floor.

Hello old friends – haven’t seen you in quite some time.

Before.  These shelves were built in 1985 to replace the shelving that was there when we moved in.  I’m assuming that was done because the room had lathe and plaster and it was what was the back of the bookshelves.  Originally the shelves were on two walls in the room with a window seat under the north window.  

It took Mike and Bill all of about an hour to get this out of there. You will notice that Chester is always in the middle of things.  I personally think he just likes having his picture taken.

Another work in progress.  Mike will be repairing the walls and fixing the ceiling.  The floor will have to wait, it’s too big a job for our time constraints.

I have to say that I’m not fond of renovation projects with a specific time deadline.  Things are not done the way they should be, they are done in the quickest way possible.  The pantry started out as a project for me.  A temporary fix in a space that was not being used.  The eventual plan with that room is for the walls to come down and have it be part of a more open kitchen – that’s down the road a bit.  Kitchen remodeling is not for the faint of heart.

The other fact pushing this project along is we know spring will get here at some point and when it does we will not want to be spending any time indoors.  While the weather is still wintry we can at least feel like we are getting something done.