| Current mood: |  relieved |
| Entry tags: | house |
wall-eyed
About this time last year, after replacing ten windows and a sliding door, we began eyeing Major Project Number Two, which was taking down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, thereby opening up enough space that we could seat more than three people for dinner at a time. (This house is a bit odd in its space allocation ... you’d think that anything with five bedrooms would have room for at least that many people to sit and eat, but no.)
So I found a structural engineer, had him out to the house; he looked it over and pronounced it not load-bearing, and shortly afterward Jak and I commenced wall destruction.
Got most of the drywall peeled off (unearthing a mess of old plumbing in the process — I am baffled as to its original use) before we discovered that the beam at the top did not extend the length of the wall, despite outward appearances. Engineer then wondered why the roof hadn’t fallen in already, and told us we need to install a massive beam across the width of the room.
Off to find a contractor, who came out and gave us a bid for over six thousand dollars, making the project an order of magnitude more expensive than we’d expected.
Ouch.
Well, having very recently laid down nearly $10K for the windows, we did not have another six to put towards this. Plus it was summer, and finding contractors who even had time to answer their phones was tough, much less ones who’d come out and bid. So here we sat, with the half-destroyed wall ...
I had surgery in August, leaving me mobility-impaired for several months ... then Christmas and kids’ January birthdays ... what with one thing and another it was early March before I finally started researching contractors again.
Last week, more than eleven months after we began this saga, the wall was finally fully removed. (We managed to shave about a fourth off the initial $6K bid, though we lost the best deal while waiting for a third quote. Once the weather turns nice, the good contractors get snapped up in a hurry.)
And now we have space! Jak and I have been known to stand in the ex-wall spot and dance, we’re so happy to have it gone. The paint job needs to be completely redone, and the floor — I want to match the oak floor into the kitchen if we can afford it, or maybe bamboo if not — but these are aesthetic details, not functional ones. In May we’re going to get a dining table that seats six to eight, and assorted other furniture, and then we can actually begin to invite people into our home.
Here’s a tip for anyone redecorating: www.findyourfurniture.com has a pretty good free Flash-based room planner. More photos and a screenshot of my floorplan reside on Flickr.
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karawynn) wrote,
