Renovation Update: Demo and Framing

empty kitchen - ready for destruction

Prep:
As soon as we handed over our deposit check, a whole team of guys rolled into our house and got to work. They were very diligent about hanging tarps to close off work areas from the rest of the house - though it seems like the entire house is considered a work area. They put a protective barrier on almost all of the floors, and draped the furniture. While we really appreciate their concern for our stuff, the downside is that moving through the house is much more difficult and everything feels like a construction zone. Because we're having a heat wave - the air conditioning is still on, so when the blowers turn on, all the plastic drapes rustle loudly in the wind. Fun.

tarps cover everything in the house

Kitchen:

Once everything was protected, the demo began. They moved our appliances out of the kitchen into the dining room, and then swiftly destroyed the kitchen. The first day, they removed most of the cabinets, the next they took the ceiling, and walls down to the studs (turns out there actually weren't any studs on one wall somehow), and the floor down to the subfloor. Cool surprise  - we knew we had a pocket door in the kitchen wall, but had never seen it because it was stuck in the wall. Once they demo'd and we could finally see it - turns out it has this great window, so we're going to try to move it upstairs to be the new closet door. 

day one -  most cabinets removed

day one - just the sink left behind

day two - everything down to the studs (hello pocket door!)

day two - sink gone! 

The other demo they started was to make room for the electrical and plumbing. They made huge paths for the electrical to run from the front of the house to the kitchen, thoroughly destroying the entryway and fireplace room. Then they made a huge hole in the halfbath and mudroom ceilings to access the new plumbing above. So, basically the entire downstairs now is under construction. 

there goes the halfbath.

i think i have a piano under there. 

Upstairs 

They quickly demo'd the window into a walkway out to the sleeping porch, and demo'd the ceiling below one of the skylights. I was so thrilled to see the skylight - confirming that they were actually installed several months ago. Even as a total mess, the room was immediately nicer with natural light pouring in. They also started framing, closing in the new walk-in closet and the wall that separates the old sleeping porch. They also worked on framing the skylights. Turns out the skylights were installed to fit between the joists in the roof, but not the ceiling joists which are running the opposite direction. So they had to cut the ceiling joist, and build new supports to fix it -aka - I'm really glad I didn't try to do this part myself.

upstairs - new closet getting framed, skylight opened

hello skylight with a ceiling joist in the way. 

In the master bedroom, after a little more discussion on what we wanted the floor plan to be, we decided on a fourth floor option. We totally remove the old, long, awkward closet in order to expand the bedroom and create a wall for furniture - but we keep a small amount of the space as a linen closet that opens into the hallway. As just as soon as we said that - the old closet came down!

upstairs - old bedroom closet and door gone! 

holes in the ceiling - looking for the other skylight

hello other skylight!

It is super exciting to have so much work getting done so quickly. There are some obvious downsides - obviously it's really noisy and super dusty, even with all the tarps. And of course, everything that gets removed is piling up in the backyard, waiting to get carted away. This is the huge pile of debris that waited in the back yard for a couple days before being hauled away and replaced by a new pile of debris.

last view of the old kitchen

Anyway - we're one week in, and I think the demo stage is finishing up. Next up is plumbing and electrical.