Fireplace

-

Things tend to expand during the process.  This is something that had held true on just about every project I've ever worked on. Not a bad thing, really.  With perspective comes ideas, and that can increase the scope.  

When we started this, we drew a hard line (well, a fuzzy line) from the front door to the back double doors.  One side would change drastically while the other would get a cosmetic lift.  As they say... the only thing constant is change and that was true for our house as well.

Once the walls started coming down, spaces looked different and we started to look at how they cold all be used.  One thing - one big thing - that was limiting our ideas was the fireplace right in the middle of the house.  While some of our ideas still included a separation between the two living rooms, the more-thank-three-foot-wide fireplace had to go, even if a wall was put back in its place.  

So down it came... we'll keep working on what, if anything, goes back in.   














Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Plan

-
Image
 It Seemed simple enough. 1. Buy a new house 2. Make it ours 3. Live happily ever after.  1.  Check!  2. Oh boy, what did we get ourselves into? 3. Looking good so far! Things are easy in theory, but tend to take longer than you think.  After buying our cute little house we moved in, got partially settled and started planning.  Working with a great team, we started working with the architect , hoping to have things all ready to go by early November.   Since renovating a house is a super easy and non-stressful thing to do, we decided we had plenty of bandwidth to take on a couple of other things this fall. So between us, we sent a kid to college, ran two marathons... a month apart... on the east coast, started a new job, moved back out of the house and got married.  Easy peasy.  What's next?! Next turned out to be hosting the wedding reception followed by Christmas the next day and beginning demolition on the house the day after that....
Read more

The Addition takes Shape

-
Image
 Amazingly, before the garage was fully taken apart, they were already starting to put it back together.  After removing the roof and adding a top plate to give us a little more headroom, the joists showed up on site. After a couple of days, the joists were in.  The next day, the plywood floor.   Before long, a wall appeared.  One night i hopped on a ladder and looked up there.  Another wall was built and just waiting to be tilted into place.  And then there were four. We now have an upstairs!    
Read more

Demollition Part 2: The Kitchen and "Hallway Rooms"

-
Image
 One of the weirdest things about this house was the fact that the path one must take from the kitchen to the garage is through the middle of three separate rooms.  A Kitchenette, and office and the laundry room became a strange, cluttered corridor.  In addition to updating the kitchen, this is one of the things I am most excited about on the main floor.  The new design creates a hallway adjacent to the office and closes off the laundry area into its won room.  No longer will video conference calls have shadowy figures racing by, trying to remain unnoticed.  Some of our decisions about how things would be put back together are still unknown at this point.  In order to know if we can open a wall or raise the ceiling, we must first be able to see inside.  So... we opened it up!   The drywall came off, while interior walls, wiring and plumbing were all removed.  This gave us a great look not only at what we could do with regard to ceil...
Read more