The stupid wall

Before we moved into our Washington home we knew that a certain wall had to go.  It is a terrible ugly, stupid wall that makes two small useless rooms.  The only good thing about the wall is that it has had a nice gas fireplace.  We decided the want need for a larger  downstairs space trumped having a cozy fireplace.  Why do we NEED a bigger downstairs space?

Because of this:

Don't ask about the spaceman boots.  We don't talk about the spaceman boots.

 If  our monstrosity of a couch isn't the biggest couch you've ever seen, I wouldn't believe you.  Why we decided buying a couch of this size was a good investment for a family who has to constantly move, it is the most comfortable couch you will ever sit on I have no idea.

So, basically, our couch doesn't fit in either of the rooms downstairs.  Solution?  Tear down the stupid wall!

Here are some pictures to give you a general idea of what we're working with. . . .

Things you should know about the above pictures...  One,  my house is never that clean.  Two,  I'm lazy and just took these pictures from zillow, so I didn't take them (I can't find my camera battery).  And three, because the photos are from Zillow they are streeettcchheed out to make everything look bigger.  So, just FIY the pictures make the rooms look bigger/better than they are.

So, now you have an idea of the space.  We think it'd be a much more useable space without the wall in there.  So we've hired a contractor to take it out.  We would do it ourselves but it's load-bearing  wall and we don't have enough blind courage to tackle that.

Over the weekend while Grandpa P (GP) and JG were wandering around the crawl space (looking at something else) Gramps noticed that the stupid wall we were planning on tearing down had a drainage pipe running right down the middle of it... meaning the nice reasonable estimate the nice contractor gave us would exponentially increase if he had to hire out a plumber.  Fortunately GP is a plumber WITH a Oregon AND Washington license!  So, after filing our permit for the plumbing we were able to re-route everything through a different wall.   After a day and a lot of holes in the wal we were able to re-route everything and save a boatload of money.

Dismantling the fireplace was not part of our plan.  JG went rogue when nobody was looking.

So, the remodeling process started a little earlier than we anticipated.  We are still waiting around for an engineer's approval before the contractor can start with the big business.  

There is no turning back now!

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