Operation Remove Load Bearing Wall

So now we're back in the downstairs, the main living area of the house.  If you need a reminder the downstairs was originally cut in half with a wall that had a narrow opening between the family room and formal dining and living room, essentially cutting off the back of the house from the front.

Mark and I are fans of an open floor plan so we decided to demo the wall!

 



Goodbye wall!  But as you can see we still had the framing holding everything in place...and we needed to take that down and replace the original support beam with a much longer one!

Ben Fowler gets a HUGE shout out in this post for all his help!!!

First, Mark and Ben had to make two  temporary walls, one on each side of the original wall so that everything would stay in place when they took out the support beam!

Hello temporary wall framing!

Oh somewhere in all of this Becca and I got to play with power tools! (P.S. Hope you like my Tory Burch "safety goggles")

 



So once the temporary framing was up...Mark and Ben removed the original framing...

 

After the original framing was out, down came the support beam that essentially keeps our master bedroom from being in the dining room...(I held my breath when they did this part...it was the true test of the two temporary wall frames...and Ben's AMAZING construction and engineering skills)

 

 

 

 

We didn't want the temporary framing to do all the work for too long, so Mark and Ben immediately put up the new support beam!

 

 

TADA!!!  Then they removed the temporary framing and we had a nice big OPEN space, YAY!

 

 

Mark and I decided to keep a little bit of wall on each side to keep all the electrical units in. 

 

So now the framing was gone and it was time to put up the drywall (HEAVIEST stuff ever)!!!

 

 

 

Not really sure why it's green, but that will be primed, mudded, and painted! 

 

So there you have it, Operation Remove Load Bearing Wall is COMPLETE!!!  Now we have a spacious open living area, hooray!!!

 

 

As a special treat for reading this entire post, I leave you with a picture of Ben at my parents house wearing some of Mark's clothing because he got soaked in a thunder storm...

 



 

:-)

 

Until next time!

 

 





Goodbye Green, Hello Clean!!!

Hey guys, sorry for my absence the past few days.  It has been EXHAUSTING working full time and working on the house!  Thank God, Mark is a teacher and has the summer off so that he can be working on the house pretty much day and night, because DIY renovations is a full time job!!! 

I'm going to start with posting the work we did over the Fourth of July weekend.  Nothing says Happy Birthday America like some back breaking labor!  I decided that over the long weekend I wanted to spend most of our energies painting the master bedroom because I needed to see a project go from start to finish to give me a little energy boost.  The master  bedroom was originally a lovely (read with sarcasm) shade of green....

 

 

with more NATURAL trim...but let's be thankful there was no wall paper in this room!!! (Hatred of all things Wall Papered Post is coming soon)

As much as I relished the thought of waking up every morning in a BRIGHT GREEN room...Mark and I decided to go with something a little more neutral and...soothing.  We chose Olympic Silver Sands in an eggshell finish Paint and Primer in One.  I highly recommend this brand and the paint in primer in one, it covered the green with just TWO full coats...originally I thought it was going to take way more coats to cover the color. 

And so we begin...

This is the room after one coat...it was already a huge improvement!  Mark also worked on painting all the trim (hate natural trim almost as much as wall paper) a nice bright shade of white!  We also used Olympic paint for this, but in a semi-gloss finish. 

 

 

YAY nice tan with a bit of gray undertone room and white trim!

 

I also painted our master bathroom this color...it made a huge improvement! 

 

sorry for the lack of rotation...but the walls were dingy in the original bathroom

 

 

everything looks so much cleaner and brighter with the new paint job (pictured above)!!!  By the way, I free hand painted the bathroom, no taping or anything...yes, I have skills!

 

So that wraps up our master suite improvements!  Next post we're back to the downstairs...

 

 



And so it Begins...Goodbye Carpet and Wall!

I know many of you are anxious to see the inside of our house, so drum roll please...here's the original first floor!

The view when you walk in to our house...blah carpet, natural trim, and cream sponge painted walls...definitely NOT our style!

This is the other view when you walk in...more of the same, plus a wood accent wall...which we are going to keep, but stain it darker and varnish it for shine.

The view from the accent wall...yes, we are changing that light fixture!  We're changing all the light features!

We LOVE the gorgeous stone fireplace in the family room!  Plus you can see it from almost anywhere in the downstairs, including the kitchen and from the formal dining room/ living room front room...

 

Notice I kept out pictures of the kitchen and half bath...I will write separate posts on those rooms later!

 

So now for the exciting part...what we've done so far...keep in mind that we closed Monday night...we've done all of this in about 48 hours.  However, it wasn't just Mark and I the first night, I must give a HUGE shout out and thanks to our fabulous friends, Ben and Becca, who were an amazing help!

Good bye carpet!

 

 

Now for the DEMOLITION!!!!

Smashing a wall is fun...but DEFINITELY harder than they make it look on TV!

 

 

So much more open and spacious feeling!  Again, thanks Ben and Becca for your help!

 

 

So there you have it, we started the post with a whole house and ended it with no carpet and no more small doorway, yay!