Chipping Away

I continue to chip away at my door frame and door trim project.  Having a motivational deadline of a weekend house guest arriving this Friday, I set about yesterday to re-claim my guest room that has been a staging area for all my construction materials.  Part of the clean out meant finishing the home for the coats that are on the rolling rack.  You may recall that previously they lived behind my bedroom door on a rolling rack, and that my shoes lived stacked on the bottom of the rack. 

The shoes were taken care of already I built shelves (that still need to be painted) but I hadn't installed the hanging clothes rod yet. I really thought I had blogged about the shoe shelves already, but I can't find that entry.  Anyway, here's that part:

And here it is with the new clothes rod installed:

I was initially resistant to drilling a hole in the end of my IKEA closet system, but in the end held my breath and went for it.  Nothing bad happened... if my house alarm is triggered today, I'll just presume the rod fell down and tripped the motion sensor... lol

I may decide to shield the view somehow... since now I've decided I am not replacing the traditional door and am going to use a sliding barn door; the barn door will not hide all this when it is open.  Ah, the snowball effect of projects.  But regardless, the immediate issue is solved, which was getting the coats hung back up where they will live, and out of the guest room, so check!  That's off my list.

Earlier this month I posed the "what if" question about pulling down the sheetrock on the adjoining wall and leaving the old wood exposed.  You can read about that here:  http://my1929tudor.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-if.html.  I decided that I did want to do that, so thinking ahead when installed the clothes rod, I wanted to remove the sheetrock behind the clothes rod anchor before installing the rod.  Otherwise, once the sheetrock came down and made the opening a half inch wider, my clothes rod would be too short! 

So, I decided to chip away about a 4 inch square area of the sheetrock, just large enough to affix the clothes rod end.  There I am... on a step stool, bare foot, no drop cloth (but I was wearing safety glasses... I am fairly faithful about those.)  I mean, it's just a small area I'm doing right?  But then... the sheetrock came down so easily, and the wood behind it was so beautiful, that I "may have" gotten carried away.  I just kept prying more and more of the sheetrock away... I did manage to make myself stop long enough to pull plastic trash bags over my bedroom chandeliers -- I hadn't totally lost my mind... but look what it looks like now...

That, my friends, is fabuloso. Look at that beautiful wood!  I'll probably figure something out to fill some of the larger gaps where the planks have split; my first step will be to research the mysteries of chinking.  A quick Google search produced this example of chinking; I believe you can stain it as well -- it doesn't have to remain white.

Here's the rest of the wall that will have sheetrock removed: