Do It Yourself Demolition

As frightening as "Do It Yourself" and "Demolition" may look when put together, we have a success story on our hands! phew!!

A week after we closed on the house, Rob and my (Lindsey's) Dad, started tearing a hole in the wall between the living room and the first bedroom downstairs. We had decided even before closing that we were more interested in having a dining room than maintaining our "three bedroom" status, so we are beginning to morph the bedroom at the front of the house into a dining room. This change wasn't hard to imagine as the whole first floor is - thankfully - hardwood which means no ugly carpet that we have to rip up and cross our fingers for something salvageable underneath, nope, only guaranteed outcomes for this renovation couple... ha! As if that is even possible! Just let us dream ;)

So after marking the size and shape that the walkway would be, they started cutting and hammering from the living room side - needless to say there was so much dust. Oh, and I forgot to mention that because the house it a bit older, the walls are plaster which creates a lovely layer of plaster dust on everything...

Here they have made it half way through the wall and you can see how the pictures
are hazy and there is dust covering the floor!

The plaster and wood was so old that by the time they made it onto the other side to start cutting through from the bedroom (soon to be dining room) the blade of the saw was visibly dull and sparking! They did finally make it through after only about two hours of work, I was very impressed. 

 

You can see in the picture above that they were able to finish the edges with the drywall and they did patch the floor as well with a long oak board. This photo was taken pre-stain when you can really see the difference between the old and the new! They cut the archway to look like the other arch in the room with the angled corners - my requests are always the ones that make things harder ;)

Here is a closeup of the arch now that it has been mudded - no, I didn't forget to paint the corners, the walls were white and the mud is tan colored!! Thanks to Bill for helping us with the mudding, we weren't feeling to confident about that!

 

So far this is what we are looking at every day! We are so happy with the way things are coming along and so thankful to the people to have been helping us with our renovation dreams! The last step for the walkway is to prime over the mud and paint - I have no idea what color that will be, I was going to leave it white for a while but if we have to paint it back to white anyway, why not be brave and choose a color?? 

All we can say is "So Far, So Good!" Stay posted for more and more and more changes to our little Royal Oak home. 

until next time, Lindsey