Breathing Room

one of the first things we knew we needed to do with this house was O P E N  I T  U P....

every room was connected with not only a doorway, but a door.  door from the front foyer to the back.  four doors in the den.  doors in the middle of hallways. two doors to the dining room.

even though the spaces had large windows and were of good size, we still felt a little claustrophobic with every wall running from corner to corner with no break.

so we removed all the doors downstairs except those to the playroom, bedrooms, and laundry room {and closets and bathrooms of course} and opened up the cased openings where we could.

being that this is an old existing house, we definitely ran into some structural pickles that changed our plans.

for instance this wall to the right of the fireplace between the kitchen and den was supposed to be G O N E

but copper plumbing pipes and 24" wide HVAC ducts tend to prevent one from complete demolition. *sigh*

other than that we widened and raised most of the other openings in the house and it made a huge difference.

^^looooooong wall in a dark room with lots of doors^^

 ^^let there be light^^

^^before^^

 ^^after^^

^^doors doors everywhere^^

^^no more doors^^

^^the wall to the left of the doorway...and a little wall to the right...was supposed to come out^^

^^but we were only able to widen and raise the opening...it'll do^^

the other "major" point of change is the flooring.  there are two rooms with existing wood floors - the formal living room which will be our playroom while the kids are young - and the dining room.  the rest of the downstairs was carpet, porcelain tile, and thick terra cotta clay tile.  we knew demo would be extensive, but nothing that couldn't be handled by a jackhammer, crowbar, and patient strong men :).  we were wrong.  as we keep discovering, this house was built well - and planned well too.  all the different flooring in the downstairs all had the same finished elevation - there were no thresholds or step ups. {we should have known what was coming...}

the foyer and den {rooms with the terra cotta tile} happened to sit on a depressed floor system - with no less than a three inch mud bed underneath.  that is basically three inches of concrete that must be removed...before then building back up a floor system...to then lay plywood...to then install wood flooring.  but it's done! and wood floors arrive tomorrow.

thankfully all of upstairs already had wood flooring so we will just be refinishing it to match downstairs.  so for now the only action up there is a little bit of wall removal, painting, mudding, and more painting.

next up - the fireplace design/plan