Our contractor, Lynn, started ripping out our walls and floor to make way for our vision of a brand new kitchen. To give you an idea of what it is like remodeling a house that was originally built in 1910, here is what is inside our walls. In case you don't have any idea what your looking at (like me), the following picture shows how our walls are constructed.
This picture doesn't show it very well, but there is shiplap on one side and beadboard on the other. That means that our walls are solid wood on both sides of the framing. (All of you men out there will have to forgive me if I misspell any building terminology.)Our plan for the kitchen was to rip out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room to make one large kitchen area. We rarely used the dining room and wanted more room in the kitchen so we finally decided the wall had to go. The following two pictures show the first stages of making this happen.
"You can see the TV from the kitchen - cool!" exclaimed Tracy.
If you look closely you will see that the subflooring has been removed because once again, we have solid wood planks under our subflooring. They are going to fill in this part of the floor with some goop that will even out the floor. We can't put subflooring down because then the old kitchen floor won't be even with the existing dining room floor - that is no good when you don't want any transition area on the floor. But since we have an almost-100-year-old-house where everything is made from wall to wall wood we don't need subflooring.Lynn is now waiting for the gluelam (sp???) beam so he can take out the wall supports. Of course we want to take out a bearing wall, but then it seems like every wall in a four-sqare house is a bearing wall. (This will be the third bearig wall that we will have taken out, and there was one already out when we bought the house.)
We are very excited and can't wait to get it all finished. I'll try to keep you all updated with pictures as we go along.
