11_Tearing Down The Walls

On June 21^st, we started our first phase of house renovation project. My husband used his lunchtime break to work on the house. He started by demolishing the kitchen wall. After his office work, he picked me up from the apartment to continue the demolition. We completely took out the entire wood paneling between the kitchen and the dining room.

Opening the wall in the kitchen.

Opening the wall that divided the kitchen and the dining room.

No more wall between the kitchen and the dining room.

On June 22^nd we continued tearing down some walls. This time, they were: the wood paneling at the dining room, half of the wall that divided the kitchen and the living room, and the wall that enclosed the living room.

Opening the wall in the dining room.

Above left: Opening the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Below right: The wall was opened.

Left: Me, tearing down the living room wall. Above right: The wall that enclosed the living room was opened. Below right: No more wall that enclosed the living room.

On June 23^rd we called the moving company to schedule our stuff delivery on July 20^th. Unfortunately, the moving company had its schedule packed from July 13^th – 20^th; so we had to receive our stuff earlier on July 12^th! Of course we got panicked, because this meant that we needed to speed up our renovation.

By this time, we managed to open the walls, as we wanted. We left a few studs, where the load-bearing wall stood, to keep supporting the ceiling. To make it more secured, we installed more studs. We would replace the studs by installing a beam, so we could have an open space.

More studs were installed before being replaced by beams.

Rerouting Electric Cables

On June 24^th we were ready to buy a beam, but apparently it wasn’t easy to find one. Chain stores like Lowes and Home Depot didn’t have it ready in their stocks, while local stores were closed during the weekends. So we had to cancel installing the beam today.

As a replacement, my husband worked on rerouting the electric cables. As some walls would be gone forever, we wouldn’t need some of the switches and receptacles anymore. Rerouting the electric cables sounded like an easy task, but it wasn’t. This house was from the 70s, so there were some adjustment being made along the time. There were a few switches that didn’t light up anything. Or, two switches that worked contradictory; two lights couldn’t be turn on at the same time. In the end, my husband spent the whole day to figure out the cable route, and he was still couldn’t figure out the contradicting switches.

Rerouting electric cables.