Tear Down that Wall, Mr. Heffron!

It’s been a busy week here at the Heffron house. As I mentioned in my first blog that I somehow deleted, we have found a gem of a handyman to help us with some of the projects that we don’t have the desire or time to work on, and he was busy at our house for a few days this week. A lot of what he was working on isn’t so glamorous – drywall hanging and repair, moving the basement door from the top to the bottom of the stairs, and then something I can’t wait to show you. Let’s start with that. From Day 1, I have felt like the stairs to the front porch/door are just TOO narrow and make the house look smaller than it is. So, Kevin (our awesome handyman) fixed it for me! Let’s take a quick peek at the before ….

And now the after! Notice that in addition to widening the stairs, he replaced the 4×4 posts with 6×6 to have them look more substantial. I think it looks so much better and will look amazing once everything is painted out! He still needs to trim out the top of the 6×6’s but there’s no huge rush on that.

Keith was busy (in addition to his day job) this week as well. He added 6 outlets in the master bath and moved the electrical to allow for two fixtures in the master bath rather than one. We’re still waiting for the drywall repairs to be finished so right now we’re living with temporary lighting, no mirrors hung, etc. Good fun!

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As I mentioned, we also had Kevin move the door from the top of the basement stairs to the bottom. Eventually we will finish the basement out, but until then we need to keep the cold air down there. So we’ve got a temporary wall and door to do that. We will go on and drywall down the stairs where there’s cinderblock, and I’m thinking we will also insulate the basement walls to help keep the cold from coming upstairs. This doesn’t seem like much of an exciting step, but it was critical to do prior to tearing out the middle of the house.

Now, on to tearing down that wall! Today was the beginning of real demolition at the house. I’m not going to lie – Keith did the hard work today. I’ve been battling a stomach issue and am still regaining my energy after a few very miserable days. So I mainly did clean up – throwing wood, drywall and general construction debris into the dumpster. Mom got into the action as well and helped do cleanup. We are not done yet, but we made good progress on it. We’ll work on it some more tomorrow and then Kevin can wrap up whatever we don’t get to next week. Here’s a reminder of the before…

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That brick is HARD to remove. We got a little bit of the brick on the floor out but not a lot. But the back part of the hearth…that’s another story! Keith had a blast getting it to come down.

To give you perspective, remember how I said it was such a shame that you couldn’t see the view when you walked in the front door? Well you can now!

Here are a few more pictures of demo and progress made!

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Now, just to make you all a little jealous, I’ll share with you our new TV “console” which we have set up. Eventually this will be a fireplace and the TV will hang above it, but for now, yep, those are sawhorses the TV is resting on!

Pretty glamorous living, huh? Happy Easter everyone!