So now that we have a baby on the way we need a little more access around the house. When we moved in the only way to get from one side of the house to the other was to walk to the entryway and cross over. We really need better access from the nursery to the kitchen. So Mom and Doug came down and stayed with us this last week and while they were here Doug helped us install a new doorway!
Here's an adorable pic of Lucky explaining to my parents what she'd like us to do with the back yard. We tried to tell her that project was being put on hold for a while but she was being very insistent about the koi pond.
BEFORE SHOT - So here is the back wall of our kitchen. The door you see goes to the small hallway that holds the office and 2nd bathroom. We decided to put the new doorway right in this corner so that we'd have easy access to the baby's room from the kitchen and by looking at the layout of the place it doesn't seem like this position would interfere with any electrical or heating stuff. and putting it in the corner wouldn't break up the wall in the kitchen or the baby's room.
Here's Pandora helping mom and I lay out plastic. This was going to be one of those messy jobs so we cleaned out the kitchen as much as possible.
The initial deconstruction went a little slow. Doug wanted to be careful we didn't cut through anything important or disturb any load bearing walls. We got lucky on this one. We didn't run into anything at all really. It just took a long time to get through the lathe and plaster which was underneath two layers of sheetrock. The first layer must have been the original from when the house was built. I'm guessing the second layer was from more recently. It was thicker.
Eventually, the men started working from the other side of the wall. You can see Jonathan's "zombie shot" through the boards.
Of course when the men got hungry Mom and I made sure they ate well.
Here's the doorway with most of the framing in. Doug spent a lot of time online figuring all this out. There's a lot more to making a doorway that I thought! Having a house that is 115 years old means the walls are weird dimensions which doesn't make things standard or easy. You can see Jonathan is working on the threshold where there's linoleum and wood to dig out. Our neighbor said he might have a spare piece of oak that he could fit in there for us.
AFTER SHOT - And here is the almost finished doorway, before and after sheetrock! Jonathan has been plastering the seams for a couple days now. Eventually we'll paint. (that's another blog entry)
And now we have a doorway! It took a week but it got done! Thanks again to the parents! It was great that you could help us out!
