Plaster & Disaster

Happy Wednesday! As you know, it’s Kitchen Renovation Week on Plaster & Disaster, where every morning I’m popping in to share a quick update on the progress in our kitchen as we have the wall between the kitchen and sunroom removed. Yesterday was Day 2 (check out Day 1 if you’re behind), and we started the day with the demo mostly done.

And at the end of Day 2, here’s how it’s looking:

Woohoo!

The task for Day 2 was to rough frame the new header and posts that will support this wall, enabling the old framing to be removed. The goal was to finish that up so that the building inspector can come this morning and hopefully sign off on everything before it gets finished and sheetrocked over.

We purchased our engineered hardwood from Barker Lumber in Woburn, MA, and had it delivered to the house on Day 1 so we were ready to go. I’ll do a final update on costs once all is said and done, but the lumber cost about $450 for the header and posts. Engineered hardwood is more expensive than what we could have gotten, but not tremendously more so and it’s what the engineer called for so that’s what we needed to go with for inspection purposes.

Unfortunately I had to head off to the office before the reno work started for the day, but Sam stayed home and I made him promise to take lots of photos. Here’s what he captured.

A big part of the day was getting the posts and beams into place, which required supporting the roof/second floor temporarily while they removed the old headers and posts to make room for the new. The light wood in the photo below is totally temporary to support the roof in conjunction with the jack posts (the tall black things).

Here you can see the first beam in place (the piece of wood that stops 1/4 of the way from the left of the photo):

And here’s the first center post in place:

And now both center posts and beams in place. You can see what I was talking about yesterday in terms of using two beams, one shallower than the other to allow for higher clearance where the pass through will be.

They also fixed the plumbing issue I mentioned yesterday.

So now the plumbing snakes back into the cabinet and around the new post:

The electrical is all set now too, taking advantage of the center posts (which will look like a single column when they put the sheetrock over it).

Since we are getting new counters, we may add a little length so that the counter comes exactly to the edge of the column, and build a little extra cabinet compartment on the end or something. Extra counter space is always valuable!

Here it is from the sunroom side:

The difference yesterday was huge, but now it’s so much easier to visualize how it’s going to look — and it’s amazing. It totally changes the light and feel of the space. I love the view from the sink into the “other” room. I’ll be adding a counter to this so that we can put stools on the other side and have a breakfast bar.

And the cats are hanging in there, though each evening Murphy is way too curious for his own good. Here he is trying to crawl into a hole in the basement:

And playing with power tools:

Here’s hoping the inspection later this morning goes okay! And I’ll be back tomorrow morning to share an update on today’s progress.

Welcome to Kitchen Reno Week on Plaster & Disaster! It’s like Shark Week, except with far fewer dramatic re-enactments and scientific inaccuracies.

As you’ll recall, we did the final prep over the weekend by removing the cabinets along The Wall. Here’s how it looked as of yesterday morning:

And here’s how it’s looking now:

Holy crap, it’s happening.

Day 1 was dedicated to demo. Our contractor arrived first thing in the morning, and within an hour the sunroom was looking like this:

Goodbye closet! Since this was the former exterior wall of the house, it was fun to see the where the original door was, and the paneling and clapboard under the surface.

His crew arrived shortly thereafter, and they spent the rest of the day tearing shit apart (technical term). For disposing of everything, we used a bagster that I’d picked up at Home Depot. With pick up it ends up being about the same cost as renting a dumpster, but the nice thing is that we can keep it as long as we want it so if there’s room we can also throw in the tile and countertop before having it picked up. We put it in the space next to the back porch, and it’s about 8′ long and 4′ wide.

Of course, it was already looking pretty full by the end of Day 1!

They started by tearing out the rest of the wall from the sunroom side, and then turned their attentions to the kitchen side. We put up some plastic sheeting that I’d bought to try to contain the dust just a little bit.

And here they go!

We only had a few unexpected issues, which is pretty good for major construction (and is exactly the reason I wanted to be home for the day). First, we discovered some issues that required reassessing the plans for the beam — the original engineer’s drawing called for recessing the beam into the ceiling joists, but the roof rafters actually made that questionable and so our contractor recommended coming a bit lower with the beam to avoid any structural issues. However, this will leave much less clearance, which isn’t a problem for the portion above the peninsula but for the widened doorway section would be a pain. So for that section, we were able to call the engineer and get approval to use a smaller beam that won’t drop as far into the space. This all means that the beam will drop into the room more than we originally planned, but it’s still going to look AMAZING.

Second, we discovered that the plumbing runs right through where one of the end posts is supposed to be:

They seem to have a plan for fixing it, though, by snaking the plumbing around the post or some such business. I trust them.

We also had the lumber for the new beam and columns delivered yesterday, and so today they’ll be cutting that and doing the rough framing. Sadly I will be at work, but Sam will be home so I’ll make sure he snaps a few pictures that I’ll share tomorrow morning.

Oh and in case you’re wondering what we’re doing with the cats through all this: we closed them in the upstairs guest room with a litterbox, water, and food for the day, and let them back out in the evening. Owen hid unhappily under the bed and in the closet the whole day, whereas everytime I check on them Murphy was just chilling on this towel I’d left on the dresser for a recent guest. Note to self: wash that towel.

So that wraps up Day 1! As a reminder, here’s the progress:

Not too shabby!