And the Work Continues

We're making significant progress through the demolition. Actually, if you pay close attention to the photo below you'll notice they actually demo'd out a little too much, stripping the sheetrock off the living room wall - oops. Still, I guess as far as mistakes go that's not a bad one. Plus it gives us a moment to reconsider (and reinforce the decision) regarding an open kitchen.

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Here's the current state of the living room. When they opened the ceiling they found there was an entirely redundant joist system. I guess the old ceiling joists weren't enough to carry the new floor but rather than take them out they just left them. Now they're coming out and we'll pick up a couple inches of height,

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Now we can start to see the size of the space on the dining room side of the house. This is with the old bathroom removed so you can see clear through to the front (and the old "paneling room"). We were expecting to have to have a bump out against the far wall here to carry mechanicals, but after the demo it looks like there's a cavity in the wall after all, so no pilaster necessary. That hole was under the old tub. Goes right into the garage, basically no floor joists.

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This is sort of the "new" elevation; from inside the old front bedroom looking back into what I guess is sort of a great room. Even though it looks smaller and smaller the more we take out, I do think I am getting an idea of the overall scale. I think it's going to come out real nice.

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Last "quadrant" so to speak, front door passed the stairs.

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The kitchen looks real different.

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Having that whole wall opened up is pretty cool. You can see where the original structure was. there were two windows, or maybe a window and a sliding door. And you can see the difference in building materials from the 50's to the 90's. There's a real difference even in plain 2x4. One of the builders today told me for doing new construction on a bath or a kitchen he doesn't use regular 2x4s anymore but rather all that framing lumber is engineered wood. Much more reliably straight and stable. Learn something new every day.