It occurred to me today that there isn’t a room in the house that might be considered finished. That says something about our ambition, but also about our apparent incapacity to finish anything. It is now my goal to actually finish a room every month. That’s actually really generous of me. It would take most people a week and they would just be done with everything. But I like to puzzle things out before I start building. Deconstruction is quick, but construction takes time. I like to anticipate problems and contemplate alternatives. And we opened up a huge can of contemplation this last weekend when we ripped out the kitchen ceiling.

We were inspired by Better Homes and Gardens magazine, of all things. There were plans, loose ones, to fix the sagging and deformed kitchen ceiling, but those plans seemed to be for the distant future. But then we saw the pictures in the magazine and thought, hey, we could expose the beams in our kitchen too. And so we did. It was extremely dirty. I recommend wearing a mask for this job. Goggles would be good too. I’m still picking dust from my eyelashes.Â

The truck is full of plaster. We burned up the lath. The plan now is to think some more about how to fix it up. We will probably paint the beams white. Need to insulate the walls a little and patch up the gaps with wood or drywall, not sure which would be better. And then trim it up. We might add some cool timber framing accents here and there too. Why not? That would be a good project.