The Great Space

The reason we bought the house. This is our favorite spot in the house. The main living room area has a fireplace and 3 Juliet balconies that have a great view of Kenwood Parkway. As you can see we started off slow with demo and thought we would keep a few existing walls, but that proved to be to wrong. None of the walls had true insulation in them and the electrical wiring needed so much attention. It just was better to start over. The old slate floors were removed tile by tile by the reuse center and now we are left with cement. Everything has now been removed even the poured cement fireplace that broke as the wall behind it was removed (I was sad about that, but that is just part of demo). Gorgeous new french doors and windows will soon be installed, so it's time to look for fireplace and flooring inspiration.

The "Metal Safe"

I don't know how to explain what a pain in the butt this built-in was in our dining room, but I think the pictures do all the talking. As you can see the built in was falling apart and was no longer functioning. After pulling out the wood we realized we had a our own "metal safe" built into the hillside. After getting multiple opinions on what to do with the built-in we decided to try and take it out. As you can see we were not successful after hours of my brother trying to cut it out with a plasma cutter, we did more damage than good. We decided that the metal safe won and we would have to block it in. Now the wall is solid and the box is only a good story. Thanks to all the friends and family that helped to try and remove this beast. It at least was an entertaining day filled with fireworks!

Main Floor Bathroom

Well our main floor bathroom had seen better days. The gold foil wall paper was peeling off the walls and the tub area had its own mallard and seagull. This area was one of the most difficult areas to demo as the tile did not want to come down. In the last photo you can see everything has been removed....even the flooring that our friend Neil fell through. In the new floor plan the bathroom will be on the far West side of the house where the once dining room used to be. This will be a half bath that will be behind our pantry area.

Our Kitchen

Here are three photos of our kitchen. You can see what condition the kitchen was in when we purchased the house. It had a bright red sink and black Greek goddess wall paper. After removing the appliances there was more work to be done. We had to remove layers of plaster and a teal floor. We were surprised to find a little green door behind the plaster. You can see in the last of the 3 photos that the wall has been tuck pointed and rebuilt with cinder block and brick. Bye Bye green door and holes in the wall. This area is solid and ready to be put back to together.

Bryce in the new house

Bryce is smiling as he walks around the house....does he know how much work this is going to be?

Sunroom Back Door

This is the back door to our Sunroom. When we closed on the house the estate gave us a set of keys. None of the keys they gave us worked on the door so we sawed off the metal storm door. Now we have access to our sunroom.

Fall Clean-up

Our first project was to just clean up the exterior of the house. So we started with one dumpster (which we thought would be sufficient for our house), garbage bags and a power washer. After we finally got the power washer off the truck we started the big job of cleaning. It took us one weekend to get most of the outside clean. Bryce power washed from morning till night, I cleaned up the lawn and over grown shrubs, flowers and trees. We even had our friend Shay from DC to help take down the shutters.