The Beginning of a Long (long, long, long, long...) Journey

I finally had to realize there are just some things I cannot do by myself. After two years of demolition and rebuilding from the walls up, we finally just broke down and hired someone to finish the job. I realize now it would have taken me another two years to do what these guys did in less than a week. My poor daughter would have been in her dorm room in college before her room here at home was done.
Here is a photo montage of where we have been. There will be more photos in the next post.
These photos are a series entitled "The Nightmare Behind the Walls", for obvious reasons. The day we discovered what was hiding behind the old beat up paneling we both almost had to be resuscitated from the shock. We just left the paneling we had removed on the floor and walked away for almost a year. That is plastic holding up some kind of green masonry, maybe plaster? There was no lath of any kind, no framing, no structure behind the paneling, just these one by two strips holding up the plastic that they had adhered the paneling to, and which had contributed substantially to the problem. By "they", I'm sure you have figured out that I mean the Previous Owners.




My dad came over and helped us (or should I say we helped HIM) frame up the room when we finally decided to tackle the problem. There was an old chimney hole in the middle of the wall and I bricked it up to keep out bugs and critters since I had no plans to put in any wood burning fireplaces.