Demolition

Part of the reason the blog has been a little neglected is that we've been working on some home improvement projects. Our house was built in 1820, and while it has lots of the old charm I was looking for in a home, it needed some updates as well.

One of the things I've always wanted was a kitchen that was a little more open to the rest of the house, and our previous 2 houses didn't even have a way to accomplish that based on their construction. This house has a wall seperating the kitchen and what we formally referred to as "The Woodstove Area". We couldn't wait to knock it down and open it up.

I've got some visuals for those of you who either haven't seen the house since we moved in 11 months ago (shame on you) or can't visit for a while. I'm going to let you know right now that A) these are not photographic masterpieces and B) the house is messy.

You can see the first visual here. That's a before shot of the kitchen as it was up until a few weeks ago. Notice the way the island is facing, the pot rack above it, and the spot next to the stove is pretty much empty because the person on that end of the island sits there.

The first thing we did was to take out the tile on the island and replace it with black granite tiles. It was a little harder than we'd originally expected it to be due to the fact that your's truly is unable to measure things. I prefer to round up or down when I have a tape measure in my hand, and in this case I rounded up. That meant that the 12x12 tiles we bought had to be cut down.

Oops. I'll let The Husband do the measuring from here on out.

When cutting tiles the wet saw is your best friend.

The end result. If you're paying attention, you can also see that we moved the kitchen around some. One of us is all for it, and the other wants it put back the way it was. Leave us a comment and let us know which you prefer!

The fridge used to be where the backer's rack is now, and the island used to face the windows in the front of the kitchen. BTW: right now the plan is to remove the door next to the backer's rack, and that little section of wall between the buffet and door is coming out, too.

Here is where the fridge is located now. Those ugly orange-ish countertops will be replaced with granite slab, and we'll have tile installed on the floor.

As soon as the woodstove was removed we went to town on the brick wall that was behind it. Even the kids got involved in the demolition.

This is the view from the living room area. I love that we will be able to see straight through the windows to the golf course from the couch! The woodstove used to sit right in front of this wall (the black thing on the ceiling is where the chimney connected).

And the view from the kitchen into the dining room. The room where the woodstove used to be located was really wasted space. Now that it's gone we've been able to move the dining room table there and use the former dining room as a family room/studio.

That's all for now!