When we decided to close down the Cottonwood Inn, Bed and Breakfast in Taos, NM and turn it back into a house we had several big projects.
The original house was built in the 1930s and expanded in the 1960s by artist Wolfgang Pogzeba. Pogzeba liked massive spaces and the nearly 8,000 square foot home was only three bedrooms. When it was converted into a B&B in 1995, the rooms were subdivided into 9 bedrooms.
We opened up the partitions between four of the rooms but our biggest challenge was opening the flow of the house from end to the other. There are two sets of semi-circular stairs but one had been built over in 1995.
In the interim, a deck had been built off the room. When we decided to remove the floor, it would leave a door hanging a couple feet above the stairs.
The photos below may do a better job of explaining . . .
First we remove the floor tiles. We tried to salvage as many as possible as the shiny saltillo is kind of unusual.
The fun started once the tiles were gone. Then the saws came out. We were able to salvage both sections of sub flooring along with the 2×6 supports that were below. These came in handy in our next project.
That line around the wall was pretty distinct and was the perfect test for my beginner plastering skills. I’ve since learned that a slight patch is far worse than just jack hammering out a chunk and fixing it.
And how about a view from the stairs upward?
Remember this door?
And here are a couple of pictures of afterward . . . (Yes, that is me, dressed bang up to the nines and directing air traffic on the giant landline headset).
Here are where the stairs begin. 
Here is an area of lath and plaster I will get to fix.
Here I am widening the doorway to the stairs, which had been narrowed to 30 inches and needed to go up to 52. You can’t see it, but I have a SAWZALL in my hand!
Are you ready for some after?
Well, you’ll have to wait for the after pictures until Part II. . .
