One more wall

After seeing the transformation happening with other parts of the house when we removed walls, I came up with an idea. A wonderful, awful idea. We're not terribly formal people, so I have no use for a formal dining room. I think we used our formal dining room in our last house about 8 or so times in the two years we lived there. So I proposed taking down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. I loved the idea of having the kitchen completely open to the dining space and the living room. This proposed change also impacted the new floors we are putting in -- so that was my argument that got Luke on-board to expand the scope of our project. 

This is the kitchen before: 

After taking down the upper cabinets:



View from the dining room:

Let's do this!

So much more open!

 

View from the dining room:

The electrical has since been re-routed and the drywall on the ceiling patched -- yay for no more raining insulation -- and it is starting to come together. Next up is to build the cabinets on the backside of the new peninsula and install the hood that will go above the range. Obviously we have to do a different range. After doing weeks of research on different slide-in ranges -- I tell you what, researching appliances is a terrible experience. It seems like there is no middle ground. Either people love the one they have, or they've had nothing but problems. This is really across the board --- are there no reliable brands?? We finally chose one and unfortunately it is back-ordered. They are hoping to receive it in the next two weeks -- but I'm not holding my breath. Good thing we've got weeks of work ahead before we really need it.

New staircase

My sister and brother-in-law were awesome to come down and help us with the next part. It was a big job -- we totally owe them!

There were a few problems with our previous staircase: 1) It was narrow 2) It was extremely creaky 3) We didn't like the turn at the top from the hallway 4) The incline was a little steeper than we'd like

We debated about just reinforcing it and rebuilding the top couple of steps to take the staircase straight up, but this only solved problems # 2 and 3. So, when Brett said rebuilding wouldn't be too much hassle we decided it was worth it to start from scratch. We are so happy we did!

We also opened up the side of the staircase and the two doorways at the bottom.

Stairs before:

After we opened up the side:

Already better!

Next we opened the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

Before:

After the wall was opened up and the stairs removed:

New stairs!

View from the top of the stairs:

Remember what it looked like before?

I love the new staircase. We made the slope a little gentler, the treads wider and deeper and it doesn't creak!

I'll end this with a cute video of Seth helping with the demo. The drywall was hanging by a thread and we had Seth come over and finish the final knock-down. He was SO proud of himself. I wish I would have left the camera running longer because his reaction after was priceless. He puffed up his chest and he was thinking he was pretty macho. So hilarious.

And if you think we are done knocking down walls, you are sorely mistaken, my friends. One more to go!