January 27th - Studs with no Sheetrock...

Two weeks in and we now have a shell with lots of studs walls that have no sheetrock!

In the basement we have a new concrete floor and new walls showing where each of the rooms will be.  Upstairs the demo team has blown away just about everything on the first floor except the studs (as shown in the photo above).  The second floor is mostly intact except for the room that will be transformed into a real bathroom and a hallway to the new master bedroom.

We can now start to get a feeling for sight-lines, as many of the walls on the first floor will be totally blown away (hopefully soon).

To give you an idea of what the finished house will look like here are some floorplans:

Basement Plan:

The basement is divided into a living area that we hope will feel like the rest of the house (wood floors, plaster walls, and windows looking out above grade), and a utility / storage space.

1st Floor Plan:

The first floor is where we will blow away walls.  The dotted lines in the floor plan below show where walls get blown away.  This will create sight-lines from the front of the house to the rear of the house - mostly looking through or past the stairway in the middle.

The room in the back of the first floor will be Cindy's study with an adjoining sewing room (labeled as a closet in the floor plan).

2nd Floor Plan:

The second floor will have a room for Zoe in the front, a study for Fred on the side, a new bathroom carved out of what was a third bedroom, a hallway also carved out of that third bedroom, and then a new addition at the rear which will be the master bedroom.

And here are some photos of the current state of the project:

Basement:

Ah... a new floor - flat and dry...  This is looking towards the front of the house and is where Fred's shop will be.

Looking back from the shop area towards the back of the house.  You can just see into Ellie's future bedroom on the left.

This is a shot from Ellie's future bedroom into her living area.  The three red columns frame the stairway down (first bay) and the hallway into Ellie's living area (second bay).  Ellie's bathroom is all the way in the right rear.

A closer shot of the columns.  On the right will be a closet under the stairs coming down from the first floor that end in a landing where the step ladder is.  The bay on the left will be the hall into Ellie's living area with the bathroom in the back where the shop-vac is.

A happy homeowner talking things over with our contractor.

First Floor:

From the living room, you will be able to see both the kitchen (dead ahead on the left) and the dining room (on the right looking through the chimney which will soon be gone.

Here is the same sight-lines a little closer in.  The draped newel post and balustrade show where the stairway is.  The wall of studs beyond the stairway will be gone with the kitchen on the left and the dining room on the right.

Here is a view from the kitchen looking towards the living room.  The view will be unobstructed except for the stairway.

Here is the view from the dining room (the kitchen is to the right).  All of the bare studs in this photo will be gone.

This is a view of what will be Cindy's study (looking through the studs that will be the back kitchen wall towards that back of the house).  Cindy's sewing area will be to the right of the studs showing on the right in the back of the photo.

Another shot of Cindy's study (taken from the "door" to the sewing area).

And a shot of the sewing area.  The entrance will be on the left (the studs will have new sheetrock put on them).

Second Floor:

This shot is taken from the middle of what will be Fred's study looking through what will be the side wall of that room into the space that will become a hallway and the upstairs bathroom.

This is a shot of the future hallway (looking towards the rear of the house) to the master bedroom.  Fred's future study is to the left, and the upstairs bathroom will be to the right (out of sight in this photo).

And lastly, here is the hole in the floor that was created by the folks who put in the silly jury-rigged toilet on the second floor.  This is shot from below.  When the demo team stepped on the floor in that area, the floor bounced and they quickly retreated.  After closer examination they realized that the plumber cut most of the supporting structure away.  Our contractor came to the conclusion that it would all need to be redone - hence the hole in the floor...

Next Steps:

The demo is almost done.  The only thing left to do is to take down the chimneys.  After that they will work on the structure - repairing what is broken and getting ready to add structure for the beams that will allow us to blow away walls on the first floor.