- The basement has gone from one big space to stud walls defining Ellie's new pad.
- We have removed two chimneys and some asbestos (one heat vent was wrapped with it, and the glue for some old linoleum tile was laced with it).
- The plumbing and HVAC has gone from crossed fingers to a design we believe will work.
- The core internal walls on the first floor have been completely replaced.
- Headers have been installed on windows (both existing and planned) - note that the original builders did not think headers were necessary!
- But most dramatically, big honkin' beams have been installed and several internal walls have been removed, so we now have sight lines!!!
For instance, here is the view from the kitchen towards the front of the house. By tomorrow, the two studs showing on the other side of the stair will also be gone and it will all be one big space.
It is kind of ironic that we would be elated to take one big space in the basement and carve it up into rooms while being even more elated at removing walls on the floor above to create one big space...
But I get ahead of myself.
One huge event was cutting the hole in the floor to provide access to the new stairs to the basement. You can now go from the first floor to the basement without going out the front door around the snow bank, down the driveway, and into Ellie's back door.
In these photos you can also see new studs on two walls. These walls replace walls that the builder and his engineer just weren't comfortable with. In later photos, yet another wall (the one with the old studs in the photo on the left) was replaced. So the core of the house on the first floor has effectively been replaced. They put up temporary walls, removed the old ones, replaced them with new walls, and then took down the temporary walls. Straight-forward, but still quite impressive to witness.
Here is a photo showing all three new walls.
The photo above was taken from the kitchen - looking towards the back of the house. Here is a photo taken from roughly the same spot looking towards the front of the house.
If you were really observant, you would have recognized this as the same view as the one that this blog posting started with. Only in this photo there are lots of annoying studs between you and the stairway. These studs are there for a purpose - they are holding up the house, but we made them go away by installing some big honkin' beams in the ceiling to carry the load without the studs.
Those are doubled up glu-lams with a quite impressive joist hanger at the T:
Now that's a lot of nails!
There is also a beam along the side of the house that will allow us to remove much of the side wall of the living room.
There will be a post just about where Paul's elbow is that will support the beam in the future. We need to leave the studs in until the post is installed. At that point, however, almost all of the studs that you can see underneath the beam will be removed which will give us yet more vistas. When the house is done, you will be able to see out a wall of windows that will be another 4 feet beyond the beam, through the garden to the street.
Here is a photo taken from the future dining room looking towards the front of the house.
And I leave you with the photo I started off with. It may not look like a clean vista to you, but it is the best that I can do at present. The point is that there will sight lines in the new house - lots and lots of them, and the stairway will be front and center in all of them. It is turning out as we had hoped, but until you start to see it, there are always concerns that perhaps you were brain-dead, clueless, irresponsible, etc.
One more beam to install (tomorrow) and then they head upstairs.
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