Tackling the "Rat Room"

There is a room in our house that we reserve for unwanted guests (we apologize if any of our readers have been banished to this room!). You will be relieved to know that Zeno took the job upon himself to salvage our "rat room"! I wish I had a few "before" pictures, but honestly, I think I was too scared of the room to open it up and take pics of it before now... 
It's true history was that it is where the coal was kept when the house was warmed by coal. It's been a good 50+ years since anyone has ventured into or used the room. Our final goal is to turn it into a pantry of sorts complete with a deep freezer! :) 


Here are Z's initial attacks... you can see that some of the cleaning fluids and solvents he had to use to make his first attacks went to his head a bit...

You get to the "rat room" by passing through the kitchen, into the first pantry, and wa lah! 

Zeno cleaned it out, fixed some of the crumbling cement and painted it

This is our dehumidifier doing it's best to dry the place out

See the little sqare part in the roof? That's a secret passage way up to our first floor landing! Too cool huh?

Here's the brave man himself

The attacked caused premature aging... note the increase in grey hairs

in addition, I noted some psychological effects from the trauma of the cleaning attempts...

Stay tuned for the final results of Z's labors!!!! He's working on the floor and putting down more cement as we speak...