Professor Veritas,
Welcome to the forum and thanks for the wonderful pictures!
You've started a big job there in, I think, the living room - is the plan to expose the beams?
Orlando.
Thank you for the warm welcome, Orlando.
The living room has turned into a monster project. Originally the room had 3 box beams and what looked like that 1960's cottage cheese texture. We wanted to remove the texture - and found out that it was actually heavily textured hand applied plaster. So - 2 weeks of swinging a sledge hammer and the plaster was gone. 2 of the 3 beams turned out to be false - just hollow boxes - but the middle beam actually houses a 16 foot length of steel rod that is mounted along a central beam to help hold up the 2nd floor. I demolished the 2 faux beams - and drywalled the "real" beam. I would have loved to keep the exposed beamwork - but this part of the house dates from the 50's, I think (the house was originally built in 1936), and the construction work look sloppy - so we decided to drywall over all and give it a lite texture.
The original rock wall with the fireplace was a white/grey stone - probably quartz or some relative of it - and was just too cold for the room. After a good long think - fueled by port and a meerschum pipe - we decided to stain the rock with wood stain - and ended up with a nice amber/brown color.
The walls were originally 60's panelling - that had to go away - so we drywalled over it and then applied venetian plaster.
More photos to come - comments are welcome.
Regards,
Prof. Veritas