We're still not sure. But at least we haven't done anything stupid yet.
But we're fairly sure we can confirm the stairs-used-to-go-to-the-living-room theory. Check out this framing.
There's no earthly reason to frame a wall like that if it had always been just a wall. That weird hole has been there since I've known the house - apparently Gabe discovered it framed in there like that during some previous renovations. Possibly to allow heat to flow up the stairs? It has been the source of many conversations starting with "What the hell is that hole doing there?"
Another deal-sealer for the stairs theory is this: wallpapered plaster found between the studs, and a metal piece which would have been an outside corner for plaster. No reason to put an outside corner in the middle of a wall, is there? Unless it used to be an outside corner.
OK, I rest my case on this one.
However, does confirming the stairs theory allow us to reach the conclusion that the correlating wall is also not original? No, it does not! After peeling back the layers, you can see that the door frame was clearly installed before the plaster. However, the nail in the coffin is a far more compelling piece of evidence. It appears that Mr. F.B. Edgerly of Oxford, Maine put that door there on February 15, 1925. (Click on the photo to make it bigger!) So there you have it.
I often refer to the room this wall enclosed as the "tiny useless room," because all it is is a portal to other rooms. It's maybe 12 feet square and has a whopping five doors in it! But wait, let's think back. We've already figured that the door to the bathroom might not have been there, because the bathroom used to be part of the kitchen. We've just proven that the door to the stairs wasn't there either. We know darn well that the door to our bedroom was a window until the early '80s, when Gabe's grandparents put on the addition. The door to the outside was put there by us personally last November. So if you subtract all those doors, all you have left is one closet and a perfectly useful bedroom, playroom, study, etc. And you've got a classic American Foursquare pattern of four rooms arranged in roughly a square. It also explains why this room has its own radiator and closet. Well, whaddya know?
However, the question as to whether this wall is load bearing still hasn't been answered! No huge beam is readily apparent after just peeling back the plaster. I contend that said beam must be between the first floor ceiling and the second floor. If it weren't between the layers, you would have banged your head on it every time you came out of the old stairs configuration. Also, there has to be a beam somewhere, because this house wouldn't have stayed as level as it is without one, and we haven't seen it yet. We will have to tear away the ceiling to really find out. No problem there - we were planning to do that anyway so we can attack the knob-and-tube wiring that still lurks there. Our super-handy friend Jeff thinks we should still put another pair of 2x12s to help stabilize things once we take out the studs. I can't see anything wrong with that.
At my father's house, there used to be a hole (this is so weird) leading from the back of my closet into the stairwell. It was at the bottom of the back wall of my closet, so if I stuck my head through (which I did frequently, of course), my head popped out about halfway up the stairs, and about halfway up the wall, above the banister.
ReplyDeleteIt made NO sense, and I still don't understand what it was doing there.