A Bit of Background

I guess a bit of background is in order. The old town's name is Carleton Place, Ontario. I grew up in Southern Ontario, but moved to Ottawa to go to college. Then, as you know, life happens; you get married, have kids (in whatever order...), start careers, decide to buy a house, and discover a quaint little town half an hour west of the city that you'd never heard of. And here we are.

The town may be quaint, but our house isn't really. Yeah, all our relatives gush on about how much character it has, but I can't get past the aluminum siding. So I try to enjoy the inside! Today I am enjoying painting the master bedroom. It has had a coat of primer on the walls and ceiling for ten years now, so it seemed high time to choose a colour and get at it! Naturally, I forgot to take a "before" photo, but this is what it looks like today.
I left the ceiling white and I'm painting the walls "contemporary white". I wanted a calm room - every other room in the house is pretty colourful!This big hole is a bit exciting. The room has no baseboards because when we bought the house the whole upstairs had orange shag carpet and orange shag baseboards. I kid you not. We tore them out the very first night, and covered this large hole with tape (!). Ten years later (!) I took the tape off to paint and decided to see what was in the big hole. I stuck my camera in and pressed the shutter....
Look! (We are now in the hole, lying on the floor looking straight up...) On the left - that's the original plaster wall with wallpaper on it. See at the bottom where they tore off the original baseboards? Then a new upright for the new wall - drywall on right. Instead of fixing the plaster wall, they built a room inside a room. In our room. So I figure the original bedroom was a foot bigger in all directions. This is pretty much the story of our poor house. It was built in 1887 and then slowly destroyed by owner after owner... One more photo:I don't know if the photo will show this, but you see the lovely original pine plank floor to the left. Then to the right is a big hole in the floor covered with plywood...This originally was the opening for the back staircase from the kitchen to our bedroom. Someone tore out the staircase, covered the hole with plywood, and then built his n' hers closets over the hole. I hate these people so much!!!

Anyhoo - I must go do a second coat of paint! As promised, a few more photos of town...
This was built as a tannery, and is now a restaurant. It's on the banks of the Mississippi, right across from town hall.
This is one of my favourite antique shops. The building was originally a blacksmith shop, built in 1875.