BrittanyMakes

Even while typing this, I don’t fully believe it’s happening.  It wasn’t long ago when I shared our kitchen and living room plans thinking it would be months, years even, before we would be able to change anything.  Well, spoiler alert! We’ve started the demo process!

This wall is going!

I think my husband and I were just tired of looking at, and talking about, everything we wanted to change in the house, so we decided to get some information from contractors in our area.  We wanted to know how much it would cost to remove, or cut out, the load bearing wall that separates our living room from our dining/kitchen.  The alternate bid we wanted to get a feel for was demoing the short wall that divides our kitchen from our dining space. We thought we could save a buck and tackle that project on our own.  With the help of family and friends we would demo the wall and remove the cabinets and all that jazz. The load bearing wall though? For sure we’d  have to hire out.  Our house is small, and having all those walls just made the space seem smaller. We knew removing this wall would open up the floorplan and make the space appear larger, not to mention improve the overall flow of the house.

The more information we obtained by the different contractors we had look at our space, we realized a lot of the work that we thought we could DIY would be over our heads. We would have to move pluming, draw a new gas line to switch our stove from electrical to gas, and moving our vent hood from the interior wall to the wall that faces the backyard.  As much as I love a good DIY, I knew it would take a long, long time to get all this done on our own, possibly meaning weeks without a kitchen and more likely than not we’d do a shoddy job.  As a DIYer, you just gotta know your limits!

We got a couple of bids from a few contractors, and they seemed to be all over the place.  We ended up finding a company off of Angie’s List that came out to meet us right away.  They really wanted to work with us, saw our needs, and knew their team could get it done for us right.  Not to mention, for all the work we wanted to do, they happened to be the most reasonable. I like to think baby Zano seduced them with his cheeks! Really though! His cheeks are scrumptious :)

So, we signed the contract on Sunday and I’m happy to report that demo has already begun! Yesterday morning our house was intact, our load bearing wall looked like this:

and when we got home last night, it looked like this!

In the front there you still see a corner of the wall that shares the entryway.  This piece is being taken down today!

I feel like i’m talking in circles, but seriously, taking down a load bearing wall is SUPER important to get right, which is why we decided to hire out.  Load bearing walls are generally responsible for the structural integrity of a house.  As you can see in the pic above, in our house all cross beams were resting on this wall. Just don’t be an idiot and remove a wall without checking if it’s load bearing. That’s all I’m gonna say!

You’ll notice in the picture our contractors first built supports on the left and right side of the wall before they did anything to the load bearing wall.   Once these were in place and fully supporting the house, they went on to removing the wall.  I can’t see the full effect yet since the tarps are still up, but it’s so close! We’re so close to having that open concept space we’ve been dreaming about since we moved in.

So, the good news is we’re opening everything up! The bad news? Our floors will have to be patched up until we can save up some dough for flooring.  Anyone have 1100 sqft of flooring they want to send us? Yes? No? Crickets?