Operation Demo

Small wall between dining room and kitchen

We closed on the house a little over a year ago, January 29, 2010. The day I signed my name on the note, Michael started operation demo. We made the choice to remove a load bearing wall between the kitchen and the living room and another small wall between the kitchen and the dining room to make one big "great room." 

The wall on the left of the photo is load bearing

Same wall behind the blue sofa if removed will open into the kitchen.

The 1st obstacle was removing a load bearing wall. I thought at the time, "this could be a problem because I think they call it load bearing because it bears a load." The load being the roof of the house. My husband doesn't want to leave a header so he comes up with his magical beam idea. This a very heavy piece of wood that he will place in the attic to hold the load of the roof. I'm very skeptical and I want to call a structural engineer. You know how a man never wants to stop to ask for directions? Well they don't want to call a structural engineer either. So Mike builds the beam and it weighs A LOT, but he gets it in the attic by cutting a large hole in the garage ceiling. I remembering him obsessing about this beam. He talked about it all the time until I finally agreed and let him install it. He is still very proud of this engineering feat. Since our house has not fallen in he considers it his biggest accomplishment to date. He actually wanted me to climb up into the attic to look at his magical beam. I did not, but I told him to take a picture of it and I would put it in this blog. He has not taken a picture of it yet so I will add it later.

 

  Now we have the house secure so we can officially start Operation Demo. It took less than an hour to destroy both walls. The photo to the right is the old dining room and kitchen. the photo below is the living room view while standing in the kitchen.

So what did I learn? I learned that Mike can become very emotionally attached to inanimate objects like large, heavy load bearing beams and that I should trust my husband to properly "bear the load" when he says he can. :)