We've been dreaming of taking down the walls that separate the kitchen from the living and dining rooms for quite a while. However, removing whole walls means new cabinets, rearranging (and probably replacing) appliances, new floors, etc. Plus the wall between the living room and the kitchen is the main load bearing wall in the house and the furnace and water heater chimneys run through it, so that's going to take some planning (and we'll probably get a new and more efficient furnace and water heater). And, oh yeah, some dollars too.
The project remained very much in the dreaming stage with a timeline beginning when at least one of the kids is out of daycare (if not both) and we aren't shoveling most of our disposable income toward that.
When Gav came along, though, space that was already tight became kind of impossible. Either three of us were crammed in there while a fourth (oh, who am I kidding? while DAMIAN) tried to cook or three of us had to be elsewhere and D was left alone to slave over dinner.
This is getting really long.
Short version: we realized that we didn't have to take out both walls at once. We could take out the non-load-bearing wall now! This weekend! Why not? The baby's only waking up three times a night! EASY!!
After some talking and measuring and idea-bouncing, we decided to only take out the upper half of the wall (to avoid losing cupboards, having to reroute a furnace intake, redo the floors, etc.).
Before:
Stupid wall. Even looking at it now, I can't think it's anything but stupid. Why is there a wall there?
Whoop. There isn't now!
D did the bulk of this over Memorial Day Weekend. At the time, we joked that it was the hottest weekend of the year. We were so naive then.
But anyway, he spent several hours in the 100-plus-degree attic rerouting couduit to move the light switch from the marked-for-death wall to another.
He did an AMAZING job. It's such a big difference.
During:
And after!
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