Walls are Comin' Down

After returning from our wedding trip to New York City last Christmas, we got busy tearing down a couple of walls to really open up our living area and kitchen.  You can get caught up on the before pictures in this post.

With the help of Alan's Dad, we got busy transforming our house 

Here, you can see some of our kitchen.

One wall down.  One to go.  

Here, you can see the wood paneling from the den.

With the wood paneling gone, we're almost there!

Now with both walls down, all that's left to tear down is the old doorway leading into the den.  

And, finally, our living area is free of walls!  We had big hopes and dreams of having a COMPLETELY open living space free of any columns. However, our little nest had different plans.  Our roof is being held up by a beam that Alan and his Dad built before the walls came down in the attic above the existing beam and the support column you see in the middle of the room.  Yep, smack dab in the middle of the room, is a column we can't remove.  However, you can see where Alan installed light switches and outlets on the column, which we have found to be extremely convenient.

Also, you will notice that the far den wall came down.  Since it was wood paneling, unlike the front room, which is sheetrock, it had to come down so that we would have one whole sheetrock wall, instead of a half sheetrock, half wood paneled wall. 

Lastly, you can see that our carpet, both the green monster, and the cream carpet in the front room are gone.  After pulling up the cream carpet and posting it in the free section on Craigslist, we quickly had someone at our house to pick it up and take it off of our hands.  It was in practically new condition because not only was it replaced before we moved in, it was in our never used front room that I don't even think we did much walking on at all.  As for the Green Monster, you can read about it's fate here. 

I stitched together a couple of pictures for you to get the full view of our new living space.  These photos were taken at the front door and you are able to see how our (pretty large) fireplace fits in our new (bigger) living space much better than it did in our lil' ole den.  The warmth of a good fire during the winter practically ran us out of the old den.  Now, we are able to heat over half of our house in the winter without all of the heat being confined to just one room.  

Next up, it's time to install sheetrock on the column, beams, and wall. Check back to see the progress! 

What We're Working With

As promised, we're sharing some before pictures of the inside of our little nest. Please note, Alan took these pictures right before we started tearing walls down, and they don't make it very easy to understand the layout of our home.  He was pretty much snapping away because I begged him to document it if I wasn't present for the demolition. 

So, to help you visualize, I drew up a quick "before floor plan" for you to peruse. (Please note: A. This is NOT drawn to scale (pretty close though), and B. Obviously, I am not an artist)

We quickly decided after moving in, that the front room of unnamed origin went completely UNUSED. It had carpet (nice, brand new, non-green carpet), which to us, meant it wasn't really supposed to be used for a dining room.  Then what would we use it for? A second living room?

We didn't use it for anything but storage.  Clearly, that was an incredible waste of really great living space, considering the size of the front room compared to our lil ol' den next door.  

Front Room (Front door is to the right)

Here, you will see the view from the kitchen.  The den is through the doorway to the left.  You can tell this floor plan made everything feel pretty closed off.

This is the only living area we occupied in the house, as the front room was so closed off and felt so far away, we didn't even use it.  Also, the fireplace (not seen in this photo) was a joy in the winter months.  You can see the lovely green carpet, as well as the painted paneling, which in person, is actually pretty inconspicuous. 

This is what you saw from the doorway of the living room/den.  A lot of wall if you ask me.  I am sure with some photos hanging on it, it wouldn't have look too bad, but we had bigger and better things in mind.



Finally, this view is from the foyer or dining room or large open area not quite large enough to call an actual room, where we come in the house, since our driveway is located in the back of our house. 

And, no we don't grow trees from our greener than grass carpet back there in the living room.  It was Christmastime and that's our adorable lil' ole tree.  I will share with you just how cute it was in another post.  

So, I hope you enjoyed taking a peek at what we are working with, or should I say, what we WERE working with.  I can't wait to share what happened next!  Let's just say, it looks like a completely different house.