We planned for months to work on the kitchen in March.
Welp.
We went ahead and did it.
Nights, weekends, after I finished my paid work, while the girls were napping, while they watched their 4pm tv, while they played in the yard, stolen hours to create a whole.
March
I say WE but Harris did all of this. He took what was a messy and
dangerous and dark/cluttered cramped section of the house that used to
be a porch and utility room and turned it into our breakfast
nook/solarium/kitchen annex/glorybeautiful light filled space. We don't
even have to turn the lights on most days.
The first part of the project focused on deconstructing the pieces/rooms and salvaging almost all of the wood to be used in portions of the project or in other on-going projects. If I had let him demo it he would have finished this section in three days. Instead, it took three weeks.
We used this as... cans, cat litter, bags, laundry at one point. so many different uses for this section that was originally part of the exterior wall of the house when it was built but hadn't seen the outside in probably 70 years. There were doors in two walls and a window in the third.
Oh and the access to the basement was here! Look at that, a whole wall built with 1/8 inch paneling! And those stairs... I'm glad no one was hurt.
And then, well it got fun. See the floor was floating there and how it hadn't caved in is a mystery to me. Harris could point to the joists that were sistered barely and explain the weight load across it. I just chose not to jump there. The floor had to come out too so that new joists and subfloor could go down that would be actually safe.
All of this Harris did to salvage the wood. If he was just demoing it, work would have been done in hours. Anyway, now we have amazing wood.
One of the really cool parts of this is that Harris used those 100 year old heart pine actual 2x4s to create the header for this wall that used to have the exterior door in it.
Welp.
We went ahead and did it.
Nights, weekends, after I finished my paid work, while the girls were napping, while they watched their 4pm tv, while they played in the yard, stolen hours to create a whole.
For the past 6-7 years of living in the house, this is what our kitchen wall looked like. Not bad, not amazing. And wait until you open the door to the other side.
March
I say WE but Harris did all of this. He took what was a messy and
dangerous and dark/cluttered cramped section of the house that used to
be a porch and utility room and turned it into our breakfast
nook/solarium/kitchen annex/glorybeautiful light filled space. We don't
even have to turn the lights on most days. The first part of the project focused on deconstructing the pieces/rooms and salvaging almost all of the wood to be used in portions of the project or in other on-going projects. If I had let him demo it he would have finished this section in three days. Instead, it took three weeks.
We used this as... cans, cat litter, bags, laundry at one point. so many different uses for this section that was originally part of the exterior wall of the house when it was built but hadn't seen the outside in probably 70 years. There were doors in two walls and a window in the third.
Oh and the access to the basement was here! Look at that, a whole wall built with 1/8 inch paneling! And those stairs... I'm glad no one was hurt.
In that wall there used to be the main exterior door to the house (70+ years ago) that led to the back porch and a utility room. You can see the old door on the next wall behind it. Those two doors gone, giant header installed, et viola, what was 4-5 different areas becomes one massive room.
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