Bringing down the house

Quite a week we had this week. Sunday night Roo threw up (just once, thankfully, and in isolation!) and was home from school Monday. Tuesday at 2 pm I got a call from the school nurse saying Monkey was in her office with a fever of 100.2, and I could I come get him? The school has a policy that a kid has to be fever-free for 24 hrs before parents can send them back. He was down to 97.5 by 6 pm on Tuesday night and basically back to fine, more or less, by bedtime... 

His school attendance for Wednesday ended up being a moot point anyway because it turned out to be a snow day. We got a 1/2 inch of slushy snow and then rain on top of it. We went to the library story hour, because the town library stayed open, and were the only people there. (By Thursday everyone was well enough to go back to school. We all have sniffles and some stray sore throats and coughs here and there, including me, but no fevers and nothing to keep us from doing life.)

The federal government shut down in the greater DC area, so HF had a 'snow day' too. He used it to take down the ceiling in the living room which, by the way, originally looked like this:

Those two windows open onto the mudroom. Originally they opened to the outside (this part of the house is the 1916 farmhouse part) but when they built the mudroom, they left the windows. So we are closing up those walls. Also there is an odd window-opening with bookshelves in it that opens to the kitchen area, of which we are not especially fond. So we're closing that up as well. We didn't think we'd take down the ceiling, which is plaster and - while not our favorite - was not terrible. Looked like the side picture (though white, not that weird yellow that it came out in the photo)... But HF needs greater access to the wiring upstairs, and taking down the ceiling is the best way to get it. And we figured, while we were at it, we might as well get the whole room looking the way we want it... So he took down the ceiling on Wed. Here's how it went down:

So... onward and upward! Electrical wiring work and maybe some dry walling of the walls this weekend are on the docket for the weekend...
And all the snow has melted and we are back to coldish pre-spring weather around here.