house :: demo

I'm back today to share more pictures of the house, during demolition phase....  I took these pictures over the course of the 10 days it took them to do the work, and I have tried to keep them in chronological order, so basically we will "walk" around the floor plan of the house 4 times, but it would be like walking through the house 4 different days. (If that makes sense.)  Grab that cup of coffee or tea and get comfy...

Day 1 of picture taking (after Day 1 or 2 of demo):

Here we are, standing in the dining room, looking into the living room.  The plaster is off the walls & ceiling, showing the lath underneath.  Also an interesting point, in this picture you can see the gap between the 2 walls, which is where pocket doors were originally.  The pocket doors were removed by the previous owner's parents, when they purchased the house in the 1950's.

From where we are standing in the dining room, if we turn to our right, we can see into the kitchen, and the demo that is taking place there.  The plaster & lath are down on the section of wall that is coming out.  Of course, there is a HVAC ductwork, and a sewer pipe running through this wall, so those will need to be moved to a new location.  Past the kitchen, through the doorway, you can see what was the 1st floor half bathroom.  This is part of that 8' x 10' addition that will be removed to make way for the new larger addition (that will contain the master suite & mudroom / laundry room).

If you walk into the kitchen and look up, this is what you see.  The ceiling was dropped from 9' to 8' in the 1950's, when a 2nd floor bathroom was added above the kitchen.  I think it is interesting to see how they lowered the ceiling.  I'm glad we have a 2nd floor bathroom, but the trade off is that the ceiling will have to remain at 8' in the kitchen.  Our contractor had hoped we would be able to go back up to 9', but the plumbing & HVAC needs to run somewhere, so it will be going through the ceiling.

Again, we are still standing in the kitchen.  The doorway to the left leads to the "back hallway", which is really only about 5' long.  From this hallway will be the access to the master suite.  The doorway to the right is to the 1st floor half bathroom, which will actually become part of the enlarged kitchen.

Still in the kitchen.  This is looking back into the dining room.  What remains of that wall will come down. 

Still in the kitchen.  Sorry about the blurry picture.  To the right, where there is a different material on the wall, is where the pantry was.  This came out to make a wider walkway into the kitchen.

From the kitchen, we walked into the dining room, and then into the living room.  Again, plaster is down, showing the lath.  I can't imagine workers in 1905 building this house and nailing all that lath up, by hand, even on the ceiling!  You can also see the carpet has been pulled up, exposing the pine floors.  They aren't in too bad of shape under the areas that were carpeted, but the flooring under the linoleum is most likely ruined by the glue used. 

 

Moving into the spare bedroom on the first floor.  The plaster is down, but hadn't been cleaned up yet.

Spare bedroom with plaster still on the ceiling.  I am glad we aren't DIYers when it comes to demo.  Not something this 7 months pregnant lady wants to be doing.  

Day 2 of picture taking (after maybe Day 5 of demo):

Again, in the dining room, looking into living room.  Lath is down. 

Standing in the dining room.  With the lath down, you can see into the spare bedroom.

Lath down in the living room, and some of the old cellulose insulation.  

 Standing in the living room, looking through what was the spare bedroom's closet, into the spare bedroom.  Lots of lath & insulation on the floor.  The ductwork on the far right will have to be moved since that wall of the closet is coming out to make the living room larger. 

More lath & insulation in the spare bedroom.  I can only imagine how much dusting is going to need to occur once we move into the house!

More lath down in the hallway & original mudroom.  The blue tarp is covering the stairs.

In the kitchen, looking through to the dining room.  

Day 3 of picture taking (after maybe Day 7 of demo):

I'm guessing by now you are starting to get the floor plan / layout?  Standing in the dining room, living room to the left, kitchen to the right.  The spare bedroom is straight ahead, through the framing.  Lath picked up / hauled away.

Standing in the dining room, looking back into the entry, that was added much later when the porch was removed, maybe the 1980's or later.  If you look up at the ceiling, on the right side, before the entry addition, you can see the angle where the original door to the house was.  The door was on an angle at that corner.  I'd really like to put the front door back to its original location, but we'll see if it is possible after they get the addition removed. 

Living room with the lath picked up.

 Standing in the living room, looking back through the dining room, toward the front entrance.

Standing in the living room looking to the stairway on the left and the dining room on the right.

Standing in the living room, looking through the spare bedroom's closet, into the spare bedroom.  Again, the ductwork closest to us, on the right side, will have to be moved.

Just a quick look upstairs.  The only demo was to remove the chimney that ran through the corner of the smallest bedroom.  The chimney was removed because it ran through the kitchen, so we gained a little bit of space in the kitchen by removing it.  

Back downstairs, and I think this is the only picture I took from this view.  I'm standing in what was the original mudroom, so it will be the master bedroom doorway.  The door to the left is the door to the basement.  Straight ahead is the living room.  The blue tarp is (still) covering the stairs to go up.  To the right is the 1st floor spare bedroom (which will be split in half to become a powder room & the master closet.)

From that doorway where we just were, if you walk to the left just a bit, you come to the kitchen.  Not much new to see here, but I didn't have a good picture of where the chimney stood yet.  The 5 gal bucket is sitting where the chimney was.

 Day 4 of picture taking (after last day of demo, I think it took them 10 days):

Standing in dining room, looking into living room.  The wall is gone!  This wall was a load bearing wall, so they had to install a ceiling beam to support the weight of the house.  We had thought that a 12" header was going to be enough support, but apparently it was right on the border of being enough support, so they went with a 16" header.  I feel like it is a bit obtrusive to the "open sight lines" goal, but not as obtrusive as the wall was, so I can't complain too much.  We also weren't sure if we were going to need stub walls in the corners to support the header beam, but that ended up not being necessary.  I hope to box it in and make it look more decorative, so hopefully that will help.  Here's a picture from Pinterest of what I hope to make it look like:

Source: http://www.tiekbuilthomes.com/daybreak-befores-and-afters/

I wasn't completely against the need for the stub walls, because I don't mind the look in this picture.  Plus, it would have given me the opportunity to put wainscoting in the dining room, because I could have ended it at the stub wall.  However, I think for furniture placement, it will probably be good to not have the stub wall to plan around.

Moving on....

Still standing in the dining room here, now looking to the right into the kitchen.  The wall is completely gone.  No need for any support header here since the wall was not a load bearing wall, but you can see where the ceiling will drop from 9' in the dining room to 8' in the kitchen.  I hope / plan on doing the same kind of decorative beam look here as in the picture above.  I think this will tie in the look between the rooms (cross fingers, knock on wood). 

And a quick look at the "spare bedroom".  The dividing wall is up.  The left half of this room will become the 1st floor powder room.  This room is around the corner from the living room and at the bottom of the stairs, so it makes a fairly convenient location for a bathroom.  The right half of the room will become the master closet.  The window (not pictured) on that wall will become the doorway between the closet and the bedroom.  We discussed how to use this room best and I feel like we analyzed it 20 ways to Sunday until finally one of our friends came up with this idea.  I think & hope we'll be glad we did this once it is done!  (The other scenario that got the most discussion was using this room as the master bathroom & also as the bathroom that guests would use when we had company.  The doorway I am standing in to take this picture would be the doorway the guests would use, and then the window I previously mentioned would be the doorway to the master bedroom.  So we wouldn't have to go down the hallway to access the bathroom, but whenever you used the bathroom, you would have to lock 2 doors.  The biggest drawback to me was that when our kids get older & have friends over, if I wanted to shower or take a bath, I would have to do it with the kids right around the corner in the living room and I didn't think I would be too keen on that.  Not a huge deal I know as kids are young for such a short time, but we ended up going with the split room option.)

Well, that is where we are today.  Demo is complete.  The back addition that held the mudroom & half bathroom has been removed.  So we are waiting on the basement to get dug as the next step.  I will keep you posted!

-V

If you want to catch up, here are the previous house posts:

House is purchased here.
1st floor before pictures are here.
2nd floor before pictures are here.