Oh, the living room. What a difference some demo made. You remember, the living room initially looked like this
The 60's had happened to this room in a big, big way. Shag carpet over what I knew to be lovely wood floors. Lava rock over a brick and stucco fireplace. Puffy vinyl window treatments.
After tossing the shades, the next project was pulling down the lava rock overlay. This was loud, tedious work and took the better part of a day to get done,
It had been installed with wire nailed to the wall, then concrete laid on the wire, then the rock laid into the concrete. We chiseled out each rock with a hammer and a set of very large chisels.
The stuff on the wall came off relatively easily - once we got going it was quick, and we could yank at the wire underneath. The rock on the fireplace had to be carefully removed so as to not damage the structure of the fireplace.
Que angels singing.
Once the fireplace was down, the shag had served its final purpose of protecting the floors. It was time for the shag to go. Here's a shot of the living and dining rooms right before we pulled up the carpet.
The carpet and pad rolled up easily - we had those out of the two rooms in just a few minutes. Then it was a pass around the edge of both rooms to pull up all the staples, and that took forever. But when we finished we were treated to this view.
The wall behind the fireplace was pretty torn up by the lava rock and will need to be replaced, and we were undecided about repairing vs replacing the stucco surround. Whatever the room ends up looking like, it's already come a long way!!
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