October 7, 2007 And the walls, come tumblin' down!

For those of you that don't know, we live in a 100 year old house. Someone renovated in the '80's but it's not great work and rather boring. So, we had a weird wall in our kitchen that Mike thought was duct work. We had some people come and look at the house to discuss renovations and everyone seemed to go with the duct work theory. Then one night Mike had a revelation, "I bet it's the old chimney". So he immediately went downstairs and cut a hole in the wall.

Viola! Exposed brick behind drab ol' dry wall - yeah us!!!! (oh yes, it is the old chimney). And there the hole sat for a couple weeks while we tried to find someone to do our renovations. Needless to say - many have come but NONE have called back about actually doing the work. I couldn't take it anymore so today, in the words of the oh so famous John Cougar Melon Camp "and the walls come rumblin' tumblin' dooooown!" Okay, so we are not completely done but still... doesn't it look a thousand times better than boring ol' dry wall?

Uh, Houston... we have a problem...

Let me back up a minute... part of the reason we, or rather Mike, knew there was brick behind the dry wall (yes, I mean other than the peek we took) is that the kitchen is in an addition. Someone closed in the sleeping porches upstairs and on the main level and, in the case of the main level, put the kitchen in it. So, we have 2 doorways and a window cut out from the original back of the house. I figured when we took down the framing from the drywall we'd have nice pretty doorways etc. WRONG! We took out the drywall in the kitchen hall area and the bricks were all cut! (Sorry about the blurry photo!)

Ooops, the original door and window are on the other side this WAS cut out of the original back of the house to make a doorway. Duh!

So we continue to work and pull down the other side... DOH!

Same deal... Ah well. No biggie. We can hire someone to frame it out and make it look nice. Not sure if you can tell from the photos but the kitchen is waaaaaay outdated. So we can do wood framing to match whatever cabinets we pick out.

Check this out... the original window sash was still under all the dry wall. Cool huh. Okay, so really it's just a hunk of old wood. Buh bye.

The kids decided they wanted to help too. Don't they look too cute with their fisher price saws!

I know you can't see much yet but trust me... it's FAB!

Okay, late night update... we're done. Of course that does NOT mean the transformation is done just the part we can do. Now someone has to come in and finish it off for us.

Oh and look what we found - arches above the doorway and window. I'm so excited!