Oh No!!!

O.K. maybe I got a little carried away! You remember when I said that we were about to start some home remodeling/knocking down walls? Yeah about that, well how can I say oops!!!

From everything I've read about knocking down walls, they say that if the attic joists are in line and parallel with the wall, then it is not a load bearring wall. Well, a while ago, I went up in the attic, and looked around. From what I could see, the posts were going the same way the walls that we want to take out are, so this week I started tearing down the sheet rock.




















Let me back up a little. When we bought this house, we did not really know what to do with the two front rooms. We don't have formal dinning room furniture, nor did we really care to purchase any, and have a formal dinning room. We are pretty much relaxed, and it would probably never get much use. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE furniture, and if we ever won the lottery, and could build our dream house, well then sure I'd have a nice dinning room with a big ol' table, but for know we're doing just fine without it!

So, back to the story. The house originally was a one story house, but at some point there was an addition put on over the garage and laundry room area. So they had to add stairs right, to be able to get up there. So, some really smart guy thought they could put them here:



BLOCKING THE DOORWAY!!!

(PLEASE excuse the mess in the background, that is my new stove, still in it's box, and our new flooring!)













Well, yeah, that's what we thought too when we first looked at this house, but we knew we could change the layout, and the price was good for the amount of space, so we bought it. Why not?

When they put in the stairs, it is in the room that was originally the dinning room. But now it makes the room just too small to use it for that. The other room was I guess the formal living room. It's kind of on the smallish side too. So, we thought we could knock the wall down that is separating the two, and whalla we have a nice long, much more usable space, right?

Plus, when I started doing some measuring, I noticed that the walls in these two rooms plus the walls in our kitchen and den, do not match up. I had figured that there was a hidden space in between our kitchen and the front living room. From my (expert, HA!) calculations, it was about 2 feet wide by 5 feet long.

So, our thinking would be to open up this space, and add square footage to our living space, this is where I had planned to put this:

Our old T.V. cabinet that I just finished painting and distressing!




















Well, the good news was that I was right, there is a hidden space back there, and gosh darnet if it wasn't 2x5! I was so excited! But then when I chipped a little off of the wall that is behind our fridge, the wall that we were planning on openning up for the doorway, and closing off the one in front of the strairs, I noticed that the water pipe, the one for the ice maker, is coming from under the slab. BIG FAT CRAP!!! Right smack dab in the middle of where the new door will be! We knew this could be the case, but we hoped that they had ran it through the walls. Now we need to do some figuring out which way to move the water line, either dig a channel in the concrete, or cap off that one, and run a new one from the launry room.

AND FOR THE REALLY BAD NEWS! While DH was up in the attic figuring out where the plug wiring runs, he noticed that the one spot where our walls are, you know, the ones we are gonna tear down, yeah those. The attic joists turn for some stupid reason, and those walls are load bearing! Crap turds! Might I relay the message about me already taking the sheet rock off?

Yep, all gone!






































Well, I pretty much felt like total horsey poo for the rest of the morning!

Now, what to do? Well, we are probably not gonna be able to open up that little space, the one that was hidden, we might could open up part of it, and make it into a built in and a T.V. could go there, which is what I had originally planned, but NOT what DH wants to do. He wants to close it back up, except for the end, and put a skinny little access panel, and keep it back there for storage/wiring for computers/T.V.'s and such.

As for the other walls, they are still coming down by golly, there are ways! We can either put up a major support beam (I did not really want a beam going across the middle of the ceiling , but if that's our only option so be it) or maybe we can put supports up in the attic. I dunno, my brother in law is a builder, and he will have to climb up there and check it out to see what way to go. This, what I thought we could do ourselves, and save the $$$, will now be a little bit more complicated, and I assume a little more expensive, but it will be done. My original goal for all of this was by this summer.

We shall see!