Wall a'coming DOWN

As planned, the wall between the living room and kitchen came down this weekend.
We put much more thought and planning into this demolition than we normally do: normally, I'm doing something else, and Dan's like, "I want to do something too - I'll go demo." And he'll go to the chimney room or the second floor and start wrecking stuff. This time, since we were demolishing a room with stuff in it (like our beloved couch or our tv) we gave ourselves a schedule:

• Saturday morning: watch Arsenal play Sunderland
• Saturday afternoon: clear out living room, set up tv and couch in parlour
• Saturday evening: Dan's department's cocktail paahty (yes, fancy times)
• Sunday morning: tape up doorways, lock up kitties, put away anything else still in kitchen/living
• Sunday rest of day: TAKE OUT THE WALL

empty!

Dan watching Monday night football in our temporary living room (parlour)

First, I took out the wainscoting while Dan took out the door trim.

Then I took out the drywall in chunks on the living room side.

The kitchen side also had wainscoting, but above it was plaster (gah, so dusty).

we turned off the electrical in these two rooms, but kept the gas line to the stove hooked up. 

4 different wallpapers: the blue, tan with fruits and flower, white with yellow and blue flowers, and yellow

tons of lath from just two halves of a wall

By 2pm we had it down to studs, so we took a quick break for lunch in downtown Lebanon. We let the cats out and Dan naively thought the plastic sheet between the dining room and living room would deter them, but of course we came home to Mango wandering around in the destruction zone.

you can make out some claw marks. 

Then we came back, Dan took out the studs with the saw-zall, we cleaned up, and called it a day.

he loves his saw-zall

pretty tired

panoramic photo with iphone

we even cooked dinner. no problems with the stove

It's hard to tell from the photos, but this space is GINORMOUS opened up the way it is now.

before

after

The wall is not load bearing according to our inspector and Carpenter Dan, although our inspector said we should still keep an eye on it 'cause you never know. I'll have him look at it after I submit my permit application.
Now that the space is open, we can really start planning out our layout and everything!