Arr Haus

This is the scene that greeted us when we arrived at the house this morning. Fabio’s guys work fast! Compared to the meticulous pace of our wallpaper scraping, this is pretty instant gratification. It’s exciting that every time we visit the house from now on there will be dramatic changes.

Fully legit.

Steve’s pantry is no more.

Tear down the wall!

Pretty amazing to see through all the way to the back of the house! Finding those pipes in the middle of the wall does complicate things a bit though.

See this post for a comparison!

Found under the wallpaper at the top of the stairs outside the unit 1 second floor bedroom:

The room that will be our bedroom is covered in a most disquieting lavendar, embossed wallpaper. But not for long!

This is the stuff on the walls.

Phil is a champion scraper.

A tiny fragment of the original wallpaper is revealed.

Even after removing the top layer of wallpaper, the texture can still be seen on the layer underneath.

Renaldo the electrician demonstrates how messed up our wiring is, as a way of preparing us for the jaw-dropping estimate he later gave us.

First dinner party with some very helpful friends!

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Ron the lead inspector with his $18,000 x-ray chromatography zapper.

Eep! The swab turned red – means we have some lead.

Dining Room of 19R apartment 1, “before” (April 2009):

(hey, isn’t that one of the Rear Admirals?!)

Dining Room, 19R apt 1, “during” renovations (viewed from living room):

We’ve got a long way to go!