This is the biggest DIY home renovation I’ve ever been a part of as an adult. I helped my dad with loads of projects growing up, especially when he finished the basement in our childhood home and redid the basement in our next home after that. I got comfortable using power tools, working with drywall and finishing with joint compound, helped with a bit of tiling, plumbing, electrical, the basics in home improvement type stuff. This all is coming in handy! We decided to take the wall down between our kitchen and living room. I posted about the process in the Friday thread at the links below, but I wanted to post some photos of how things look today. This weekend we will pick up some drywall and other supplies to start finishing things up. We need to craft a piece of wood trim to connect the hardwood to the laminate flooring in the kitchen, the latter of which is about an 1/8” higher than the hardwood floor. We’ll probably wait to put the baseboard back until we paint in the spring just for the sake of convenience. So the project won’t be completely finished until maybe March (or whenever we can tolerate the temps to open windows to paint!) I only had to make a few cuts to the 2x4s along the top but it still was fun getting reacquainted with our table saw. Plenty of other projects on the horizon!
Process photos:
Beginning
Progress
Stopping point
And here are some photos after we cleaned up and moved some furniture around. Eventually the counter height kitchen table will have casters so I can roll it where I need to use it, kind of like a moveable kitchen island. We’ve got the casters but need to put supports in place first.
You can see the pantry room from one of the photos. I have another set of metal shelves to put together for that space and more stuff to haul up from the basement makeshift pantry in the next couple days. Eventually I’ll figure out a clever way to store our vacuum, floor steamer, and other cleaning items in there, too. I’ll post updates when we start getting drywall up! We also have to move the light switches further down which will require putting in a box but that will be on top on the kitchen side so it won’t be too obvious.
