The Walls Come Tumbling Down

OK, so tumbling isn't the word for it. Ripping down with a crowbar is more reasonably what happened. The first task on our agenda was to open up the kitchen to the rest of the house. That closed off, tiny box of a room just wasn't working for us. We both were itching to take our frustrations of the last 9 months on something. And that wall was our target. Here it is before. Notice the teeny doorway and the wood shelf closing off the room.

 

By the way, that wallpaper was the only paper that came down so easy a three year old could tear it down with her bare hands. 

First, we had to remove all the cabinets. We are going to attempt to use as many of them as possible. They are in excellent condition and have a lot of built ins inside them. They are nearly new. But they are getting painted. Just saying the word "paint" makes my dad's face twist all up. He likes them that color. That's sad. 

In case you ever need to know this, your cabinets are held to your wall with about 2 screws each. So when they say you shouldn't hang from them, you should listen. Oh, and that counter top? Yeah, 2 screws for each section. Nice. Anyway, here they are, out of the kitchen so we can attack the wall. 

 

There now, isn't that better already!

That corner won't stay, you will see it disappear soon. The far beam is load bearing, so we have to shore it up before we can just rip it down. The opposite wall, in later posts, you will see is gone too. Before we could get too far, we had to figure out electrical and cap it off. It would be a shame if our new house electrocuted us.

A bit of the pile of trash we created.

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Do you see how much it opens it up already? It felt much bigger at that point, but of course we had a lot more we wanted to do. The cross beam will have to say. Can you see the "decorative" ceiling in the living room? In order to fix that, we'd have to bring down the ceiling. It is easier to leave up the cross beam and have a natural break than to tear it all out and start over. This is what happened after the first night, after we took the kids back to Grandma's. It was productive and very therapeutic :)