We've been making nice progress on finishing my office job, staining the old oak around the windows (looks great) and getting ready to paint. But there are a lot of niggly technical details that have to be dealt with, like having working electric outlets.
The outlet on the wall between my office and the dining room is dead because we cut out some old circuits, so in prep for having the electrician back, I opened up the wall a bit so that the electrician could put an outlet into the dining room wall at the same time.
But I hit an obstruction. A second wall inside the wall, made of old 1 x 6 tongue and groove. I cut through it with the Sawzall. Hit something else behind it, not the other wall, but what, some molding? No. A pocket door. In roughly the same place as where the bar was at 6739, a connection between the original dining room and the original long living room with its fireplace, also roughly the same as at 6739. The door was probably closed up into the wall in 1931, as part of the conversion to a two flat.
It's not just any pocket door. It's solid oak, eight feet tall, 68 inches wide (yes, five feet eight inches wide), a single door that was pulled across the opening. It's magnificent, is what it is. I have some major demolition ahead to get it out of the wall, but could barely sleep last night thinking through the possibilities of using it, probably as a gigantic piece of molding or maybe, with some elegant modifications, a shallow cabinet/shelf unit in the dining room.
It fits the house perfectly. In fact, it looks like its been here since 1893.
1 comment:
Sounds like a great headboard - sheila
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