Pre-demolition

The house's previous owner contacted us about giving us back the fireplace mantel that originally went with the house. I'm not entirely sure why it was removed from the fireplace or the house, but I'm glad they kept it and are giving it back to us. In the email, he also included some pictures of what the house looked like pre-demolition.

Here's the fireplace mantel and surround in question:

We have since taken the mottled green-and-brown tiles off. We'll eventually re-tile it with something more attractive.

A view into the room with the fireplace. That wall was removed in demolition (we have the doors), and the children were not included with the house. The bathroom chandelier hung in that room.

In the former dining room, looking toward the back door and former kitchen. The curio and the wall have been demolished. I'm not sure what that large wooden thing on the right is, but we don't have it. This room is where our enormous kitchen will go.

The old kitchen. Check out that linoleum! The sink is nowhere to be found. I think this will probably become a mudroom.

It will certainly be a while before we get to any of this stuff downstairs, but I thought it was interesting to see what condition the house was in when the previous owner bought it to renovate. Everybody always asks us if we still have the woodwork. Unfortunately not! A few of the windows still had their original casements, but there were virtually no baseboards or crown moulding or anything like that. Now that we have pictures of what they looked like, we can recreate them if we want to be historically accurate.