The Mystery of the Wavy Wall

As with most houses, you inherit a lot of little quirks here and there no matter how thorough your inspection or how great of a house you have.

Well, we had a great inspection (as in, our inspector was great, not the state of the house so much), but even with all the things pointed out to us, there are still plenty of things we discovered as we worked on the house the first few months we inhabited it.

One morning, while my sister ev was helping paint our kitchen cupboards, she pointed out a wall in the living room, the first one along the right when you come in the front door. She said it looked wavy. I wasn’t sure what she meant. I mean, wouldn’t I have noticed a wavy wall? Especially one that I see first thing when I walk in the house every day? Apparently not. I walked over and sure enough, the wall was wavy.

To me, it looked like classic water damage (one of my biggest fears once we became homeowners), but I wasn’t sure how that would be possible since there is no reason for there to be water damage there. I took a deep breath and just accepted it and moved on.

For the most part.

I mean, I kept trying to think of reasons that would be there. Was there damage? Would it come back to bite us? We just spent thousands of dollars on new bamboo floors, scraping popcorn ceilings, getting them re-textured, painting walls, where we going to have to start all over at some point because this wall was showing signs of a bigger problem?

Eventually, I just stopped thinking about it because a million other things took over.

Well, right around the corner of that wall is the first bedroom which we are designating as the nursery for our little munchkin (nickname suggestions welcome!). Last Sunday we finally started working on it. There’s a laundry list of items that we need to do to get that room ready but first things first: the wood-paneled closet.

I mean, what were they thinking?!

I was anxious for Juan to tear off that paneling but he was really worried about what we would find when we removed it. It’s the risk you take when you start to take things apart in a house. He took down the first panel and found drywall. Good! Took a few more pieces and it was looking to be a much easier job than he thought. Then we get to the right side of the closet and encounter what looks to have once been a door. WTH?

Once all the wood paneling comes down, we analyze the situation. See if you can figure it out:

Yeah, we figure they extended the existing closet to the right by swallowing up a small coat closet that was by the entrance and did it in the cheapest way possible. They made some ugly cuts, did a dismal job in cutting the drywall (it was crumbling), didn’t even finish drywalling, mudding, let alone put beadboard on the corners, and then covered it all up with cheap wood paneling. ಠ_ಠ

So the wavy wall? That’s where the door used to be, and instead of doing it the right way, they did it the cheap and easy way and ended up with what we have now. Funny thing is, Juan and I were fantasizing about splitting that closet and maybe making part of it a coat closet for guests to use when they come over, but we didn’t want to deal with construction so we nixed the idea. Too bad they got rid of it! Mystery solved!

At least it wasn’t water damage. *sigh*