Let's Split Up, Gang

Evidently, I think I'm George RR Martin, because I'm going to break one house event into two posts.  It just makes more sense this way, you guys!  And I promise I won't make you wait five years before the next one.

One thing that we really like to do when thinking about our house is guess at the changes that have been made in renovations over the years.  Some things, like the windows (which really aren't that great, so we're replacing them), are pretty obvious, and some things, like the siding in the wall in the back bedroom, we had ideas about that we can finally confirm.

Remember this guy?  Proof.

Having all of the drywall removed from the original part of the house answers some of the questions we had and also raises new questions we're going to have to ponder (gladly!).  Come investigate with me!

So, this is the architectural plan of our house as it is now.

We always figured that "Bedroom 2," the back "Hall" and "Bath 1" were added later.  They had that stuck-on feel as well as slanting floors and strangely thick walls, and they just didn't go with the rest of the house.  That's part of why I'm not terribly bothered that we're getting rid of them.  

We always wondered, though, and could never quite decide, what the deal was with the entryway and master closet.  We knew that there was no way a closet like that was in a house this old, but we wondered which bits of it might have been stolen from the house and which from the porch.  Now that we have all the original walls revealed, we're pretty sure we know.

 This is the inside of the closet, and now we can see the siding from the outside of the house as well as beadboard on the ceiling and upper walls that matches the porch, so we know this part of the closet was borrowed from the porch.  That gap in the siding on the right looks like there used to be a window from the bedroom looking out onto the porch, and I'm glad that we already planned to put that guy back in.

I spotted this in between two studs in a another part of the closet, and that profile is pretty clearly again, the siding that used to be the outside of the house.  So we think the other half of the closet used to be part of the entry, which makes sense because the light fixture in that little room is way off to one side (which may or may not drive me a little crazy).  So we think the house used to look like this:

That cute little L-shaped porch just makes me happy.

 Hello, random wonky boards in the master bedroom.  Most of the shiplap is so nicely honed and well-fitted that there's clearly something going on when there are giant gaps or crooked boards.  That one in the center has matching wonkiness on the other side of the wall, so there pretty clearly used to be a door there into the dining room.  That makes sense, because the current doorway from the bedroom into the little hall by the bathroom isn't original, say the wonky boards, and the door to the bathroom used to just to its left.  So you used to enter the bedroom from the dining room, which sounds weird to us, but was pretty standard back in the day, and only access the bathroom from the bedroom, which was just how they used to do it.

They haven't taken all the drywall down in the second bedroom and kitchen, but I don't see a door from the kitchen into that bedroom so far.  I wonder if you could only access the second bedroom by walking from the first through the bathroom?  I wonder if I'm wrong that the little hall in front of the bathroom didn't used to be there?

 I'm also wondering pretty hard about this patch.  It seems newer than the door patches, which is interesting, it doesn't go all the way to the floor, and it's too narrow to be a door, but it is in that wall between the master and the dining room and has a patch on both sides.  I've seen ironing board cabinets in old houses that are about that size and shape (no, I'm not totally obsessed with laundry, really), but it seems too low and in a weird place to be that.  I guess it could be something as practical as where they had to cut into the wall to fix some wiring at some point, but maybe it is also a good spot for a little curio cubby?  Maybe there's treasure hidden there?  I should go rip that patch off the wall myself and see what's in there, right?

And this here is totally throwing a kink into my certainty about what's going on with the porch/closet/entryway.  This is in the wall of the master bedroom to the entryway, and it's clearly a door-shaped patch.  It is not any kind of centered, so I reject it as original on the basis of my own prejudice against wonky things.  Who cut that door there, then?  Why is it right against the wall?  Who wants to go straight into a bedroom from the front door?  It could have been the lady who lived there before us, who I think is responsible for the closet, and who made a lot of art that she may have kept in the living room/dining room.  Would she have used our "Master Bedroom" as a dining room, separate from her "gallery," and that's why it had a chair rail and a light fixture like you find over a pool table in a pizza parlor (no pictures, sorry, we traded it in years ago)?  That patch seems older than her very involved paint job in that room, though.  Was this a second living room in a time when two families shared the house and therefore needed a second entry?  That could explain the awesome blue wallpaper.  That's definitely parlor wallpaper.

I like finding the answers to some questions, but I also like continuing to wonder about others (not that you shouldn't tell me if you can offer some insight into these things!).  Even more, it's comforting to me to see the evidence that other people, maybe even the original owners, have changed the house to make it their own.  I'm excited about improving the house to meet my family's needs, but my love of old things leaves me with some guilt about messing with the "original" house.  These patches tell me that the original house is gone, and has been gone for a while, so that guilt is misplaced.  I can worry that our design is ugly (it's not), or too big (probably not), but I needed this reminder that a house is a place that evolves, happily, to meet the needs of the people who live there and their time.