From Bedroom to Den

The new house is definitely live able as-is. But the present layout leaves some things to be desired for our personal preferences. For instance, there is a bedroom connected to the kitchen, and in that bedroom are double doors leading to the backyard.  Not ideal... 

Because we enjoy a more open floor plan, we invision something better from this space. This wall with the closed, white door in the above picture is the other side of the kitchen. To give us the open feeling that we desire, and get rid of this awkwardly placed bedroom, we decided to knock this wall out an open up the space.   We wont be redoing the kitchen for probably another 6 months or so after we move in, so this room whole area will look rather unfinished until then.  But between the planning and the other renovations we have in the meantime,  I'm sure the time will fly.  

We needed a way to discard the construction waste, and renting a dumpster was expensive and time constrained. We found this neat option. It is called "The Bagster".   You buy the bag at a hardware store, fill it up, and whenever you are finished filling it, you call and schedule a time for the waste truck to come and retreive it.  There is a pick up charge of course, but it was a lot cheaper then renting a dumpster. 

If you are interested, you can click HERE to read more about The Bagster or see if there is a pickup rout in your area.  

The walls are plaster, and therefore, not the best for demolishing.  It is hard to tell, but the room is covered in white panel board. The first step was to remove all of the trim around the doors, as well as the baseboards before removing the panel board and uncovering the plaster. 

Here is the fireplace that was covered up. We knew it would be there because of the black tile mantle area on the floor.  We thought about trying to keep the chimney and fireplace in the room, but keeping it would really complicate both the downstairs and upstairs floor plan, and we already have one old fireplace in the living room to bring back to life.

Here you can see half tan plaster and half white panel board  

Here is simon removing some of the panel board. 

Finally we got it all off! Woohoo. You can see the missing moulding along all of the doors, windows, and baseboards.  

These are the double doors and closet on the other side of the room. 

Next came the plaster boards. 

There is a lot of electrical wiring in this wall, so the power had to be out for us to safely demo. 

The Bagster is filling up fast. Simon kept making trips to pour out our plaster waste. 

Finally, we managed to tear all of the plaster board off of the wall.  The next step was taking the plaster off the kitchen side of the wall.   

Here is the after picture.  The only thing left is the fireplace and the studs.  This is a load bearing wall, so we will have to brace the ceiling before we can take the studs down.  

It looks a bit like a construction zone right now ( although we did sweep after this picture was taken)  but it is definitely looking different, and that in and of itself is exciting.  I am anxious to see how it will look once we take the wall down.  That will hopefully happen in the next few weeks.