The House in the Garden - Chapter Two

Now we begin the second chapter of our tale. In true Dickensian style, the hero's story will be told in eagerly anticipated installments. In the beginning, his bleak life is unattractive and seemingly hopeless, until a generous benefactor takes an interest.

 There will be laughter and tears, villains and charming girls. 

Unexpected, totally random problems that must be solved will present themselves, leaving us wondering if life will ever work out for our  poor, unfortunate hero. About half way through the tale, the readers will begin to wonder if this story will ever end. 

 But ultimately, the hero will have his happy ending in the company of loving family and loyal friends.

One of my goals in writing the blog is to document the entire transformation of the house. And since everyone wants to see the "before," a few ugly, boring entries are how things must start. Personally, I like to read about projects that show me the beautiful "after" pictures. 

This is the "before" main level floor plan. Each of the three rectangles was a separate construction.

 The original house is on the right. It included the living room, kitchen and upstairs with two bedrooms and a full bath. The upstairs is small and will only have cosmetic work done.

The middle section was the first addition - a laundry room, sun room, and work shop.

The left section was the second addition - a study and master suite.

More details can be found in Chapter One - HERE

Here is our new floor plan. We are making an opening under the stairs to connect the living room to the sun room ... through the old workshop! The old sun room, old study, and old workshop will be combined to make a new great room with kitchen, dining area and family room. This will be the heart of the house. The old kitchen will become a small office for me and a powder room. 

We got the permit a few weeks ago and demolition has begun. First, the wall was removed between the kitchen and the living room. Parts of it were cinder block and made quite a mess.

But I have the neatest contractor ever! He always cleans up before he leaves for the day. Yoshi is wondering what happened.

Next the studs and other wall were removed. And, of course, the jumbo vacuum is in the center of the picture.

The wall between the sun room and the workshop was then removed. 

The green tape is where the new doorway will be cut.

Next week will be short because of the holiday, but I suspect the new doorway will be cut and some additional cinder block removed. There will also be some preliminary work done for the new central air conditioning and heat. The house currently has two window A/C units. One is in an upstairs bedroom and the other is in the back, downstairs bedroom. Boring but necessary.

And when we are finished and the cherubs and Greek gods are painted on the ceiling, it will look just like this!

Just in case you are wondering, the illustrations are from a 19th century edition of Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Somehow that seemed appropriate. There was even a cat in a couple of the pictures!