My husband and I bought our first house in November. We're totally in love. But, it was built in the 70s, and I don't think it has been updated since.
It's a cutie on a dead end street in a quiet neighborhood. We've got half an acre of land, and I think it couldn't be more perfect...
...except for one major flaw.
You see that fireplace? Well the light glowing behind it is the front door. When you walked in the front door, it cleared the back of the fireplace by about 1.5 inches. It was miserable!
Well, and do you see that wood paneling? And carpet!?
Mostly, we both just hated the living room. So, we decided there was only one thing to do...
Little did we know what a project this would be! My dad is an experienced DIYer, so we figured we had this handled. We expected to be able to bring the fireplace and chimney down in an afternoon. So, we (my husband and I, my dad, my sister and her husband) got some sledgehammers and got to work!
What we weren't expecting was the fireplace to be 4 layers of brick thick with mortar poured down in between each layer. Clearly, someone did not want this thing coming down.
By the end of day one, we weren't even close to finished.
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And the worst part was that the brick had to be hauled out one bucket at a time. Our yard was wet from recent rain, and we couldn't back the truck and trailer to the door. Each load had to be carried across the yard and to the driveway. It was not a fun experience.
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By the end of day two, we'd made considerably more progress. We had all of the wood paneling down, the carpet up, the wall paper ripped out of the entry way, and only a couple of feet of brick to go.
At the end of day three, we had the entire thing down (including the bricks that were about 1 and a half deep set into the foundation. We were left with a pile of rubble, a hole in the floor and a hole in the ceiling that ran all the way out of the roof.
With rain coming, we tacked down a tarp on the roof and let mother nature come!
Then, we hired a drywall specialist to come in and give us walls (and repair the hole in the ceiling....which almost meant scraping off all the "popcorn" on the ceiling and replacing it with an "orange peel" so it matched)!
In the mean time, my dad and husband repaired the roof.
The drywall guy did a fantastic job!
This is before he added the texturing. You can see the hole in the floor and the patch in the ceiling in the above picture.
Next we painted (this is while the paint is still drying, thus the uneven spots).
All that work and we're still not finished!!!!! Be on the look out for Part 2 when we paint the book shelf!
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