WEEK 1
There goes the kitchen
The first kitchen wall is down
Chunky temporary steels have arrived
The master bedroom wall falls into the kitchen
So it’s been almost a week of the new house renovation and the place is a dustbowl. I walked in today and part of the master bedroom wall was raining through the kitchen ceiling. Even now after just a week, one of the two kitchen walls has already come down so I can stand in the front garden and see through the entire house to the back garden, it’s a million times better already with light flooding through the dust!
Upstairs the walls are coming down too. We are planning on taking two of the current bedrooms and turning them into one master suite. Complete with dressing room and large ensuite bathroom. We haven’t taken the wall that connects these two rooms out yet because it, as well as two large steel girders, currently support the first floor ceiling. This all makes ordering the destruction quite a job. First we need to bury the steels in the ceiling, and ensure they are fully supporting the wall. Then we can take a sledgehammer to the wall. Once finished the bedroom space will be one big area, and the steels will have disappeared as they’ll be flush with the ceiling.
The kitchen wall is gone but the old steels still need to be removed
You can see the old steels in the master bedroom photo. Identical steels run through the kitchen directly below the master suite. Removing them all is going to be one of the biggest structural challenges of this project. Luckily I know my structural engineer really well and would trust him with my house – which is exactly what I’m about to do.
I might be weird loving this stuff so much but it’s so exciting to see an old building coming back to life. I know it looks like a hurricane has ripped through, but its emerging.
There goes the kitchen
Master bedroom wall is gone too but again the old steels are still on show
WEEKS 2–3