Week 2: Demo Begins

The framers are here! The framers are here! And boy were the fast. Lonnie and his team took two and a half days for this to happen. Never thought it would be that quick! They did a fantastic job and also learned that he has done work on a few other houses in the neighborhood. Apparently in the 50s and 60s Homerama took place here.


Mud/Entry: The wall separating this room from the kitchen and dining room was removed, since it was load bearing we had to install a 14' LVL beam for the proper support. Some people do not like to have this installed when going for an open concept because your ceilings will not be one continuous plane. In our case we are leaving the parallel wall that separates the kitchen/dining and living room which is also load bearing so it is going to match up making it look as if the house was originally built that way.

 Before

 

Before: The Beautiful Knotty Pine Room

 

 After

 

 After

 

They say people tend to leave things, like mementos, in the walls they construct for a nice surprise down the road. I am not sure if putting match books in a wood stud wall would have met fire codes today but I am glad whoever put them there did. A collection from various places, mostly local St. Matthews joints, the old bank, an old restaurant my parents used to hang out at. The builder also left the receipts from the lumber used dating back to 1955.

 

 

 



Kitchen & Dining: The wall separating these two was not load bearing so we took it all out. This will have one continuous ceiling plane. I love the medallion in the dining area. It is going to serve as a visual boundary for the eating area. The kitchen flooring was several layers of some real nice vinyl, that lime green and orange is in any house over 40 years old. This was stripped to the sub floor which will help for the plumbers and electricians when reworking for the new kitchen layout. They will come in and do their work then we can install the floors.

 

 Before: Wall separating kitchen & Dining

 

 Before: Basement door, front door hallway

 

 Before: Dining room

 

 Before: Dining room ceiling medallion

 

Before

 

  

 After: Kitchen looking into the dining

 After: Hallway looking into the Mud Room

 

 

 

Front Door/Hallway: The front door enters right into the wall that encloses the stairway to the basement. We decided to make these half height walls with a nice finished counter. This makes the complete transformation of the open concept plan. From the moment you walk in the front door you can see directly to the back door. I am going back and forth if I should do banister and poles instead of the half wall... thoughts?

 

 Before: Front door entry

 

 

 

 

 

Bedroom 1: One of the great things about this house was the size of the bedrooms. All were well over 12x12 which is huge for the area and the age of the house. This bedroom had a 8' long closet with only a 5' door. Problem here is that you couldn't even use all of the closet because you couldn't get back in there. Waste of space. So we re sized the bedroom closet and made a new hall closet that will hopefully one day house a stack washer/dryer unit. We are having the lines plumbed and vented for it now and will just be used for storage until then. This is a 'want' on our list but with the demo going on and the mess that the plaster walls make it was best to go ahead and construct it now.

 

 

Before: Hallway                                 After: New hall closet

 

 

 Before: Bedroom 1

 After: New Bedroom 1 closet

 

Bedroom 2: This bedroom was the largest of the 3 upstairs and thankfully this room shared a wall with the master bedroom meaning another opportunity to steal some functional space. Enter walk in closet for Matt and I :) We took as much space as we could from this room and we are still left with a 10x10 room which is plenty big for a kids room or an office.

 

 Before: Bedroom 2

 

  

 After: Bedroom 2

 

 

Master Bedroom: The master is a good size and has a full 3 piece bath, the only thing missing here was the closet size. Looking at the pictures it might look as if the size of the walk in is a bit much but this was an immediate fix we could do now. We would love to be able to expand to a full on-suite and maybe a nice sitting area. good news is that this room is situated in the far back corner of the lot giving us the chance to expand one day. One day, One day....

 

 Before: Master Bedroom

 

 After: Master looking into new closet

 

 After: Walk in closet

 

 

Lots of things have already took place yesterday and today so I hope to have some more updates by then end of the week. Our home is really starting to take form!