New Doors

The original front door to our house was a double door that was painted red with red double storm doors. The glass in the doors had the same diamond pattern as the giant front window. Although the double doors were nice to have when we moved in, we just didn't use both doors that often. So when we replaced the door we just went with a standard craftsman style single door with sidelights. This door just gives the house a whole new look and feel.


In the family room we had an old dutch door that we liked to call the Mr. Ed door. Although the door was cool, it just wasn't going to fit in with the style we were going for in the house. We still have the original door, however Jessica's dad wants to install it in his garage.

In place of the Mr. Ed door we installed a french door. This is only a 4ft wide door because we had limited space to work with and we wanted to make the door symmetrical to the window on the other side of the fireplace. The new door lets in so much natural light and it's a lot more energy efficient than the Mr. Ed door.

Support Walls

Since our ranch house had standard 8ft ceilings, we wanted to raise the ceiling up to give the house a more open feel. We are also removing part of a load bearing wall to open up the kitchen into the dining room. In order to do all this we had to put in two support walls to install a new support bean where the original wall was. Once the support beam was in the new ceiling joists were installed, raising the ceiling height to 9.5ft .

Support wall on the left looking into the hallway

Support wall

New ceiling joists

Removal of original wall and original staircase wall to basement to open up the rooms

New support beam and ceiling joists

New doorway framed in from the garage to the mudroom

View of the front room with the original wall removed

Demolition Time

After the staircase was moved, it was time to do some demolition. It took us about 3 full days to do all the demolition. The worst part of the job was moving the insulation in the attic. There was a ton up there, so we had to move it all over to the bedroom side of the house in order to take down the ceiling.

Wall between the living room and kitchen

Doorway from dining room to kitchen

Family Room

Kitchen

Doors to garage and basement

Living room/dining room

Part of the ceiling gone

You can see some insulation peeking out

Entryway

Old and retro appliances that were in the kitchen. Surprisingly they worked pretty well for how old they were.

There's a hole in the floor!

After the front window was installed, the weather started to cool down and winter was here before we knew it. Most of the winter months were spent working on building the cabinets and picking out hardware, doors, colors, etc. for the house. Then once April came around, everything started to turn green outside, so we knew it was time to start demolition!

Before any of the walls came down a new hole was cut in the floor for the new staircase to the basement. The old staircase was located in the kitchen and was really inconvenient. The door to the garage was right next to the basement door, so one door had to be closed in order to open the other. So we eliminated that issue all together by relocating the staircase to the middle of the house.


Hole cut for the stairs





Support wall in the basement to keep the floor from falling


Stair opening with the beams removed.