the start of our hardwood floors!

can you believe dj did this in 1 afternoon!  i think it looks freakin' fantastic.  it gives us a good idea of what the rest of the rooms will look like.  of course... this means i'll have to hustle on my part -  which is painting walls/trim & figuring out how to decorate the living & dining rooms  :D

less destruction, more building

the walls are all down now.  so... we have a much better view of our junk room ;D

our temporary stairs... 

& our newly built permanent ones :)

check out the awesome ceiling support... courtesy of my resident handyman, dj ;D

the ceiling from another view... 

oh... & this is our 2nd bathroom (or was)

tearing stuff down is the most fun

& the destruction begins....

here's a decent picture of most of the wall.. as you can see, some of it is already missing.  oh, & please ignore the mess behind it.  since that room has no specific function right now, it's kind of become our biggest junk drawer  :)

a picture of the wall from the other side...

the biggest piece is now gone...

as you can see, the living room side of the house is a couple of feet higher than the entryway.  those steps... we'll need to tear out & rebuild to be as deep as the new entryway.  they'll be hardwood too.  actually, when we're ready to put down the hardwood floors, we'll start with the steps!

our 2nd bathroom (behind the wall)... probably won't be able to use this much longer

the wall on the 'living room side' is a load bearing wall, so dj built this huge beam/header to support it.  it's great for pull ups (or it would be if i could actually pull myself up) ;D 

look for more to come soon!

reprioritizing

click on image to view larger

i know i said we were going to have hardwood floors down by now... but we decided - after careful contemplation - if we wanted to do it the "right" way, we'd need to do one more thing on our list first... tear down & rebuild the wall in the entryway. 

a little history on our house... back in the day it was a smaller house with a little general store attached (which i think is kind of cool).  one of the previous owners turned the side that was once the general store into an efficiency apartment to rent out.  when we bought the house it was separated into 2 living spaces.  So when you opened the front door, you were immediately greeted by a wall (right in your face) - with a door to your left & a door to your right.  it was horrible & awkward & really difficult to maneuver if we were carrying bags into the house (or even if more than 1 person wanted to come into the house at a time). *sighs with frustration*  

but we have vision :D  all along we've been planning to push the wall back a few feet to open up our layout & create more space... & we're finally to the point where we get to do that!  i'm super excited.  you can check out the changes in the picture above.  

ps. yes we realize this also means we'll be renovating the bathroom behind the wall (eventually).  it's a good thing we have this really nice other one to use in the meantime ;D