The doorway gets widened!

With the built-ins finally in place, we turned our attention back to the widening of the doorway problem. Our current obstacle: the supply lines to the upstairs bathroom are right in our way. After several days of phone tag, we FINALLY got ahold of a plumber, and he came out to take a look at the lines. He was very optimistic about the ease of moving the pipes. And since we have a popcorn ceiling, we are actually going to open up the wall behind the upstairs bathroom, so that we can access the pipes both above and below without opening (and therefore re-patching) the ceiling. :)

So, here's how things were to begin with:

We want essentially the same configuration, but one stud to the right. Ideally, the jam for the newly widened doorway would be about where the rightmost copper pipe is.

In order to save space (and presumably lots of money), the copper lines were replaced with PEX pipes (AKA the red and blue plastic pipes) instead. We made sure to keep the old copper lines to sell off later. Of course, things weren't quite as simple as we first thought. This downstairs wall doesn't line up with the upstairs hallway where the pipes connect with the tub. So, the plumber had to do a little rerouting to make sure everything still drained properly.

After several hours (and a bill we care not to think about), our problem was solved! You can just barely see the location of the original copper pipe in the top left of the same space where all the pipes are now. We hope to put the jam of the new doorway between the cap of the old copper pipe and the new PEX pipes.

Now we can move forward with actually opening up the doorway. Step 1: remove the drywall from the dining room side of things.

Instantly we get a sense of what we're going for! Moving the jam just to the left of the red and blue pipes will allow us to see out the bay windows in the back, bringing in lots of light (assuming it's daytime).

Step 2: Try to document all the electrical work to avoid extreme confusion when trying to rewire things. We should have been better about this step.......there will be more about that later....

Step 3: Measure and build the new header so that it can be in position before we build temporary walls all around the doorway and we can't get it in.

Step 4: Build temporary jack walls to support the weight of the second story and roof before removing any of the studs or header that are currently carrying the load. The temporary wall in the living room was no problem.

The temporary wall in the dining room posed a few difficulties. It turns out you need a level floor to build a wall that's structurally sound. And when you started ripping up a little section of the floor already so that you could knock down all the drywall, you have to keep on ripping up enough flooring to attain a level surface.

Unfortunately for us, the geniuses who owned this house before us decided it would be perfectly fine to layer not one, not two, but THREE separate pieces of "subfloor" and vinyl linoleum one atop the other. Lovely. Note the two bottom layers are the EXACT SAME pattern of linoleum. Some people...

Ok, now we can get back to building the jack wall on this side of the opening.

There are studs everywhere!

Step 5: Now for the fun part. Demo! We started by first adding in a stud where we want the new door jam to be. Then we started taking out the old studs and removed the supports for the header.

Then the header itself came out.....moment of truth.....the house was still standing!

Step 6: Try and wedge the new, huge, massive, heavy header into place. The tactic: first shove the right end into the space you see above. That side of the header should then be resting on that jack stud about a foot below the ceiling. That will give us enough of a break to try and wedge in the other side by angling in another jack stud on the left side and slowly pounding it into place so that the jack stud is vertical and the header is horizontal.


After a lot of heaving and pushing and pounding, we finally got the header to sit horizontally across the jack studs. Unfortunately, it was hanging about three inches off the main beam. So more pounding and pushing to slide it back into place....and about an hour later, we finally got it where it needed to be!

What a beautiful thing! Once we nail everything in place we can move on to Step 7.


Step 7: Remove all the temporary jack walls and marvel at the open space!

Looking in from the front door

The "Before"

What a difference! There's so much more light in the space, and the flow of the house is so much better. We're so proud of ourselves we'll forget about the electrical work and the drywalling and all the finishing work that still needs to happen. For now, we'll just enjoy the open space (and always wear shoes in the house because there are still staples everywhere from the three layers of linoleum in the dining room and kitchen).

The Built-Ins Go In!

Alright. Measured, constructed, remeasured, trimmed, reconstructed. These babies are ready to be put in place!

After much shimmying and sliding and pushing and perhaps a few choice phrases muttered under our breath, they both finally squeezed into place. Phew!

Once they were secured to the studs in the walls behind them, the built-ins were ready for some finishing to make them look like they belong there. We wanted to continue the chair-rail and crown molding from the rest of the room, but to make it all flow, we first had to add some 1x2s around the perimeter of the face.

Oh what the moldings and a little primer can do!

They're beautiful! They still need paint (and to be filled with books!!!!), but we're very pleased with how they (finally) turned out. Now just imagine the pile of laminate flooring and sundry boxes aren't in the way, and it's actually starting to look like a living room from this century!

For those who haven't seen them, here are the before pictures:

The Built-Ins Go In?

So the built-in shelving units were perfectly constructed and ready to be slid into place. This should be an easy job, right? HAH, famous last words.

We soon discovered that measuring the space between the wall and the fireplace AT the wall to ensure a tight fit actually ensures TOO tight a fit. We neglected to take into account the 20" deep brick step of the fireplace, the fact that not all bricks are in a perfectly straight line, and that we would need enough room to slide the built-ins past them to reach the wall. Oops. The result of this miscalculation, of course, was two beautiful shelving units that were each a 1/2" too wide.

So close!

Since the fireplace isn't moving any time soon, we had no choice but to disassemble the perfectly straight, perfectly level manifestations of hours of hard work and painstakingly trim each individual shelf in each of the two units.

Sounds like a great time for Barb to bow out of the project and tackle something a little simpler: painting the bedroom.

As much as we loved falling asleep to the soothing walls of PeptoBismol pink, we thought it was about time for a change. The hideously heavy floral curtains made excellent drop cloths. 

                 The Before:                                              

 

                                                   The After:

So much better! Now we can sleep at ease....if we weren't still worrying about those bookshelves...

The Built-Ins Get Built

With the widening of the doorway project on hold until we can get a hold of a decent plumber, we decided to move on to the next big project: the built-ins. Time to head back to Lowe's!


After a lot of mental math and back-and-forth on design ideas, we settled on The Plan and got all the necessary supplies. The real excitement was getting it all on the roof rack of Brandon's car.

The Plan is to construct HUGE shelving units on either side of the fireplace. Because we have 8' of height to work with, we want to maximize storage space without making them overpower the room. Since we also have chair-rail surrounding the space, we decided to continue the line of the chair-rail by breaking the shelving units into two different depths so the shelves below the chair-rail are deeper than those above. In other words, we have a lot of measuring to do. Good thing we have a big backyard that doubles as a wood shop.

As luck would have it, while we were out picking up supplies, we ran into a fellow TFAer who quickly became our third set of hands and first house guest ever! Thanks for your help, Caitlin!

Java helped, too! 

We decided to move all the pieces inside to construct the box of the units. So far so good!

With the main frame of the units ready to go, it was time to figure out exactly where all the shelves would go. Yay, mental math!

All they need now is a little spackle to fill the drill holes and another coat of paint. Well, that and to be actually put in place. Oh, and to add all the molding so they flow with the rest of the room. Ugh, maybe tomorrow...

Cabinets, Cabinets, Cabinets (and what Bdon has done too)

So, for the next few days, Barb lived in a box. Well, several boxes, actually. She took off all the doors from the upper cabinets in the kitchen, and proceeded to sand, prime, and put two coats of white paint on them. The white cabinets make the room so much brighter!

 

...In the mean time...

Brandon was too big to fit in the boxes too. So he had to come up with some stuff to do. Luckily, the list is long.

He plumbed the front door: (the front dead bolt could barely latch before)

Moved the ceiling fan from the dining room to the bedroom:

Painted the obnoxious brass fan blade connections for the fan in the living room,

And decided to tackle the demolition for the widening of the doorway between the main living space and the kitchen/dining area.

Unfortunately, when he opened up the wall, it was a classic HGTV moment: There is ALWAYS a catch. The copper supply lines and the PVC waste water drainpipe were RIGHT where we want to open up to. We will have to wait to hear back from a plumber before we move forward...