Yesterday afternoon, after much struggle, the funding came through. Last night, Charlene and I let ourselves in and took down the paneling and pulled up all of the baseboards, a move which may or may not have been a mistake, in preparation for the floor refinishing guys who showed up at 8 this morning.
At 11:30 we got the call that the house had closed.
Here are the "before" images stolen off of Jim Michaelsen's page
The paneling came down, so the living room walls are now all plaster, the carpeting came out of the hallway and living room, revealing wonderful red oak floors, we're now scrambling to make sure that the roof is up to contemporary professional standards, and while we'd hoped to be able to save the baseboards to replace until we're ready to redo the walls, that didn't happen, so we're going to have to buy new baseboards. Hoping to find some really nice hardwood for cheap, and looking for ways to attach it that don't show unsightly nail heads or leave us replacing them yet again when we go to replace the plaster with wallboard.