Four-day Weekends.

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:09:38 GMT

My goal was to be as productive as possible this weekend and vurumai has given me a lot of incentive to get rolling on a few projects that, honestly, I've been paralyzed on. One of these was taking down the old wall between the kitchen and living room and putting in the breakfast bar.

Of course, I've known all the steps that would have to happen on this for a while, but a few of the steps were going to be a pain in the ass and I knew it. The wall is load-bearing, there were wires coming down through them, the furnace sits on the entry point for these wires, etc, etc.

I kind of made this weekend the weekend I was just going to shut up and get it done. Two weekends ago, I put up support structures to either side of the to-be demolished walls, enough to support the ceiling joists while I tore out the old wall.

That done, it was just a matter of deciding where to start. Those wires were problematic, because my plan was to originally just drop the new wires in the same fashion - right through the ceiling beam.

But the fact I have to cut a trench for the washer has given me a better option: I can run the wires through that same trench. That settled, it was just a matter of taking down the old and putting up the new.

Below the cut are the pictures I took along the way.

So here you can see the starting setup. There are two temporary "walls" to either side of the wall I'm going to take down. Note the black wires hanging from the ceiling.

The view from the kitchen.

I tore out the wires, which took a while because they're cloth and under the furnace. I rehooked everything up in the attic and cut down all the supporting 2x4s.

Moment of truth: if my little temporary walls were wrong? Yeah: whole roof collapses.

Thankfully, it held long enough for me to lift the 4x6 into place.

A little hard to see from this angle, but I one-armed a 9'-long 4x6 to the roof, one-handed a couple 2x4s under it to hold it up and in place while I readied it for the next step. That was a whole lot of wood to handle (pervs).

A little bit better view of those 2x4s and 4x6.

While the plan the whole time was to replace all the 2x4s with two 4x4s capped by a 4x6 (very sturdy), I decided to go with a third 4x4 on the other side of the "doorway." This meant another trip to Lowe's (a few of them are starting to recognize me, given the shear number of times I've walked through their doors).

View from the kitchen.

I decided to make the bar itself extremely sturdy, echoing the wall itself: a short 4x6 mounted on two 4x4s. I put two 2x4s in place to mount outlets to.

I also built the frame for the smallish outside piece. I haven't decided if the breakfast bar will wrap around or not, but I'm thinking not. Maybe a small shelf or something?

Urg - this project is admittedly missing a woman's touch.

The view from the kitchen.

Pushed the counters and range back in place, also moved the washer back. Reclaimed my kitchen after three weeks of chaos.

Note the fluorescent light. Been there since '73, I would guess, if not when the house was built in '51.

The view from the kitchen.

After cleaning up a bit, I spent most of today installing the new light. The wiring layout in this house is crazy so, starting at around noon, it took nearly four hours to take down the old light, run the wires to the new location (note the hole in the roof), and make everything work again.

The 'dining room' light won't turn on now, but I'm okay with that since I'm probably going to wire that up next. And it won't be like these guys wired it.

I should note that the switch for that light is just hanging from the roof now, but that will be moving to the wall to the far right of this picture (just off the frame), along with switches for the hallway, new lights that are going to go in over the breakfast bar, and new lights that are going to go in over the living room couch.

I can say that I'm pretty happy with this. FINALLY, things are starting to slowly come together. With that doorway situated, I can throw down the wood floors through the living room.

The kitchen will have to wait until the washer has been moved (ie. trench has been cut through the floor. Oh - the washer is that white thing on the far right; the trench will run from that wall, which is where all the water pipes are (the bathroom is on the other side) to the far left, off the screen, to the utility room).

I'll probably work on taking down that horrid wallpaper next and that remaining cabinet. Either that or run the lights in the living room/breakfast bar. Okay - there's still a lot to do, but after this weekend? There's a bit less.

When it's all done? HUGE party at my place.

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Four-day Weekends.