Monday, February 22, 2010

Entrance



Here are some before photos of the entranceway of our house. When you enter the house, there is a 4 foot long hallway that ushers you into the living room. We have taken the hallway down and plan to reorient the entrance so that you enter into a foyer with a large coat closet as soon as you enter, a tall and narrow shelving system on the left for shoes, mail, key, etc. The new plan would have us entering into the living room to the right.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Structural Wall -Midpoint



Unfortunately, we don't have photos of the demolition. The house had piles of dusty rubble that we cleaned up with snow shovels. Then swept, shop-vacuumed, mopped three times and voila...the wall is ready for the structural guy.

Structural Wall -Before



Just because I haven't written does not mean that we haven't been busy (triple negative). We have decided (probably against better judgement) to open up the walls between the kitchen and living/dining rooms and renovate the kitchen. The plans have been in the working stage pretty much since we moved in (April 2009), but they were really just dreams. Well, I think as soon as you dream of a kitchen with more than one drawer and a tiny bit of extra cash comes your way, you dive right in. We did, anyways.

Somehow February seemed like the best option. I'm always a little bored on my holidays anyways, so why not cram an entire kitchen reno into 3 weeks! Step One was to wait patiently to be able to tear the drywall off the wall that we intend to remove. Actually, Step One was having a Structural Engineer come to advise us on how to keep the house from falling down, since the wall in question is structural...of course. Step Two was seeing if we could afford to pay a contractor to do the structural work. Step Three was doing drawings for the permit application and it was actually Step Four that had us waiting patiently for said permits and waiting patiently to be able to tear down the drywall. As you can see, we weren't very patient. We cut a "window" just to see what it might look like from the kitchen to the living room and vice versa.