In which we finish the gutting of the second floor, get another visitor, and do some Spring cleaning.

Gutting of the walls and ceiling on the second floor is finally done!  Now we just have to clean up the plaster bits and the dust and move on.  We now know every inch of the second floor space and have great satisfaction in knowing that the space is almost ready for renovation rather than removal.  We did find some areas of dry rot, but not too bad.  You can see it the right of the door in the photograph below.  The studs and surrounding boards are all in need of a bit of propping up.

We had another visitor today, this of the canine variety.  Miss Mae came to spend the afternoon.  I don't think she like all the dust, and having to make her bed outside in the barn.

It was a gorgeous Spring day yesterday and one that I didn't want to waste upstairs in dust all day, so I got to the building early and performed my Spring cleaning dance in the downstairs of the barn.  Since I hadn't spent too much time in the barn since it was vacated last week, I haven't really felt connected to it.  It was simply a pass through space to get to work...and a dusty and dirty one at that.  Someone else's mess there meant that the space wasn't ours yet.  It might seem quite pointless to sweep a dirt floor, but it worked wonders for my mental state!  I even uncovered the large window that opens up to Cross Street, and let me tell you, that extra light is astounding.

We've gone from this:

To this:

To this:

and it makes me feel so much better about the space...took me about an hour to sweep the dirt from the floor and chuck out all the debris, but for some reason, just doing that made me feel less overwhelmed by the space and even a bit proud of it.  Of course now the floor has to come out and new support beams put in place, new windows, get rid of the doors, perhaps a raised floor for one of the spaces.  We have about 1500 square feet to play with here. One thought is to divide the space in two and raise the floor about four feet on the side of the barn that faces Cross Street to the height of the window in the corner. and make one long retail space there and then have two other spaces that open out to the parking lot  in back with a deck that overlooks the water.  The space under the raised floor could hold all the heating and plumbing and electrical for the building, thus saving us some valuable space.

The red wall you see is a very well poured cement foundation wall....I am thankful for the little things that work!