Originally, the lodge room walls and ceiling were covered with painted-white paneling, and the ceiling was dropped down far enough where we could reach up and touch it.  (The actual original height of the lodge room is 21 feet). You could only see half of the 2 story stone fireplace.  After we tore all the paneling off, we had to strip the logs of the bark (by hand), sand the logs, stain the logs, re-run the wires to hide them, repair the chinking (white stuff in between the logs), and paint the chinking… it was quite the project!!  In the middle of us doing this project, we had people asking us where we are living when all this is going on… the look on their faces when we told them we were living “right here!” in the middle of this construction zone was hysterical!

Lodge Room fireplace before…

Ripping out the paneling…

Windows behind the paneling! Awesome…light!

After the ceiling was exposed, the logs were stained, and the chinking was painted…