The inside scoop

The carpenters have made some great progress on the interior of the house. Much of the work has been trying to hoist 22" wide LVL beams (stacked 3 thick) to support the joists of the main part of the old house, the load-bearing wall between the front house and the old kitchen and under the upstairs bathroom. Some of you may be saying: i didn't think they made 22" LVLs. They don't. We had to buy 25" LVLs and they were then ripped down to width. Oooph! But it was the only way to get the open floor plan downstairs. And now that they've pulled down most of the temporary support walls, you can really get a sense of how open the living room, dining room and kitchen will be.

The first picture is (to Larisa's left) is the north wall of the "office" and the two closets under the stairs (ladder leaning against the closets).















This next picture is from the "living room" towards the dining room and kitchen. The back door is on the left.















Here are some of those massive beams. The walls are closets for the airhandler and furnace and the guest bathroom.















(The fummy story hinted to in the last post.  For those who do not know Todd Kellison, he coined the word fummy, to mean funny, just without any laughter).
So, early in the project, we joked with the contractor that many of the walls were being held up by exterior siding and paint. .. some framing was not necessarily continuous between the ceiling and floors. Some of you have experienced this first hand during various gut/remodels of bedrooms and the kitchen but 5 years ago.  I guess this information was not conveyed to the carpenters. . . they took off the siding on the back of the house, only to have the back wall fall off and drop 2 stories to the ground. Fortunately, they had supported the ceiling and roof. With hind-sight being what it is, we probably should have demolished the back half of thehouse and started from scratch. Oh well!  The picture below is the now new south wall of what will be our master bathroom (formerly the kitchen) off of our bedroom (formerly the dining room).  I guess this answered whether they would save any of the dry wall on that wall, especially since the tile mosaic backsplash was still attached.  Sadly, some of the glass tiles are still scattered in the back yard.