You may remember this is the way our hallway looked the first time I saw it. This view was walking through the back door. Lots of green! That is the was floor of the hall. We were told the original heart pine floors were under the carpet. So DH made a deal with me that if we removed one sheet of the plywood and the floors were in good shape we would keep going if not the deal was we would buy new flooring and put it down. If you look to the left of the photo you see the swinging door to the dining room and the pantry door. Always seemed as though it was just a funny little odd space, at least to me. I always wondered, did the hall ever have a continuation of the wall all the way to the kitchen?
So we gathered our courage, grabbed the hammers, pry bars, you get the picture. So after the carpet and padding we have some very old linoleum. I did research this and it was a very popular color and pattern between 1920 and 1940.
We are good so far, so now for this layer and the plywood.
We have gone trough four layers, and now there is another one. We haven't fell through the floor yet, so keep going. At least someone had the good sense to put heavy duty felt paper over the original floor before covering it with the ply wood. Peel it back honey lets see what we have!
Oh my, they are really there, heart pine they have paint on them, but perfect condition other than the paint. From our estimation they have not saw the light of day for at least fifty years maybe even longer. I wish they could talk! Now see that white out of place board to the right? Yelp that was the continuation of the center hall wall!
Remember this little strange area? The little area where the cabinet is sitting?
Here it is now. No your eyes do no deceive you there was another room there! But such a tiny little space, only 6ft by 8ft! The original food pantry is still intact, so Google here I come! According to all the information I have been able to get my hands on, houses during this time frame that had an attached kitchen always had a room such as a pantry dividing the kitchen and the formal dining room.
This was to help with the kitchen smells and heat but some homes had two pantry's and this house was one of them. They tore out the original dish or butler's pantry to make the kitchen bigger.
You can see where the rest of the center hall wall was removed. We have found evidence of the original door to the kitchen to the dish pantry and now that the floor is drying we can see the wear patterns in the paint. We will be replacing the lighter wood that was put here whenever the floor was covered. When the house was built the floors were laid first then the walls on top of the floors, so the heart pine that was under the walls that were taken down is lost forever.
So you have the IS part of our demolition.
But all is not lost, replacement pieces for the floor, I hope will be here next week and the lumber for the dish/butlers pantry rebuild. That's right, it's going back and I didn't even have to make the suggestion. DH suggested it first. I am so excited. So I hope you will follow along as I try to recreate this little room! It will be the exact same size as the original down to the size of the door opening. I am collecting pictures have tones of ideals to play with. There was not a sink or running water in this room, we know from exploring under the house. So I'm thinking it was more of a dish pantry where the cook maybe placed the food on serving dishes before it was taken into the dining room. If anyone has any history on one of these rooms, I would love to hear from you. So maybe in a few weeks, my dish pantry won't look like this......
Food and dishes on this side, and laundry on the other. It will be nice just to store food here and be better organized.
Stay tuned for the WILL BE!
Sandy
