Blizzard of Demolition

Just when I thought it was over it is actually only just beginning.  Happy New Year to all, by the way.  It's new years day today and we kicked off 2015 with a sledge hammer.  December was no joke either.  between Christmas concerts, dinners and decorations we started the main floor demo and floor plan.  First we had to remove the door and build the new walkway between the stairwell (our old bedroom) and the living room.  I must mention now that the layers of this house must make up for half the damn insulation!  Seriously once we started to take off the layers it became abundantly clear that this demolition was going to be the biggest of all.

Door into stairwell: before

• Layer One: Panel board
• Layer Two: 1/4 inch plywood
• Layer Three: Weird textured 'wallpaper'
• Layer Four: Old crumbly dusty dirty drywall.

We are gaining an inch to the whole room just by taking down all this crap.  I haven't even told you about the ceiling (about as bad as the walls...).  

The Onion House

Completed Walkthrough

The fun continued when we invited some friends over for dinner, with ulterior motives of hanging a particularly painful piece of drywall... So how many men does it take, three.  Yep three.

Jeremy, Bryce, and Clint

It may have been the wine, but damn did I laugh.

 So Christmas went of without too much drywall dust getting into the chip dip, but there is no rest for the DIY renovators.  The time had come.  It was time to throw in the towel get out of the mess and get er' done.  Time to move.

 As you may have noticed I'm gung ho and ready to rip in the video ( I actually had to do another take because the first was a bunch of whooping and swearing).  Now what I didn't film were the tears of loss as I packed up my beautiful and peaceful studio.  All sewing and tranquility has left the building.  We had been preparing for this day pretty much as soon as the ink was dry on the ownership papers.  But nothing could really prepare us for the reality of living in a house of 400 square feet with 2 adults (who both really enjoy their space, hence the house, studio, shop setup we've been working on for two f-ing years), and 2 kids (little whirl winds of crumbs and any projectile toy they can find or build).  But the food is drywall free... even if it is cooked in a microwave.

Living in such a small space is challenging but also strangely satisfying.  Everything is always clean and tidy.  There are no doors to close or corners to hide things in.  It took a couple days to get everything in it's place to really make everything run smoothly, but so far so good.  That said I can't wait to have the big house back.

Half a kitchen.

The day after we moved we took a trip to Edmonton, Alberta in search of most of the makings for a new kitchen... During boxing week.  I can't even start to tell the horror stories of shopping, it's just too fresh.  Yet we came out with a good deal and half a kitchen.  The other half is on order and will be here within the month. 

We have accepted a challenge from our friends back in B.C. (Steve and Robyn).  They are also ripping out their kitchen and a wall (or two, I'm not positive of the details), So its a race to the finish.  I doubt we will win because our demo is becoming more and more complicated as we 'progress' (blown in insulation in particular in the entire ceiling). 

But for now I'll let the photos tell the tale.

The layers are unbelievable.

After the cabnets were removed we finally had confirmation of the wood floors under the entire kitchen.  This was thrilling to say the least since we had planned the entire renovation around this one unknown.

• Layer One: Lino
• Layer Two: Sub floor
• Layer Three: More lino
• Layer Four: Back breaking scarping of the floor to remove ground in glue while somehow preserving the existing wood floors.  Ugh.

So all in all the demolition is in full swing and the blizzard outside is a nightmare but the dump is open and weather waits for no one.