The gift that keeps on giving; Part I

So a few days after I had moved into the house and Elizabeth had gone back to Seattle I was having a conversation with one of the neighbors.  "You know" she said, "I think there are beams above that drop ceiling in your living and dining rooms."

Elizabeth and I suspected we had hidden high ceilings as I had noted that in a pantry room and an old closet that was now a bathroom we had 9 foot ceilings while in the rest of the house they were around 8 feet.  Plus, in the dining and living room there were these '70s ugly click together tiles and we had thought about tearing them out.

Well, that was all it took.  There was no furniture in the house yet and it would only be me living in the house for the first month so I figured it was time to do some investigating.  I busted out one of the tiles and poked my head up through.  No beams but as suspected, 9 foot ceilings hidden away.

Tearing out the tiles was easy.  The framework that supported them took a little more doing but by the time I finished I had a ton of reclaimed 2 x 4's as well as 1 x 2's and 1 x 4's.  Plus, I recycled a can full of nails which have come in very handy and saved us money.   Clearly I am my parents son I guess.

Framework in the dining room hiding the higher ceiling

So I was rolling right along and feeling pretty good about this.  Unfortunately areas of plaster on the walls were damaged removing the framework.  Knowing that we had to have a major overhaul of the electrical system since we still had the old knob and tube running through most of the house it made sense to just start opening some walls to facilitate the upgrade.  Then we could just re-sheet rock.

All was going well until I tore out the the drop ceiling in the living room and discovered a rather large area of water damage right in front of the fireplace.  I certainly hadn't seen this coming and it only affirmed my belief that house inspections are a costly expense that yield little useful information.