Demolition Derby

Tonight, my buddy Derrick Weaver came by to help me tear out the closet wall under the stairs and rebuild the divider wall and new closet door in the hall way. Derrick and I go way back in our remodeling world, in fact, I helped him demolish his old kitchen about 6 years ago so I suppose turn about is fair play!


We began by tearing out the 3 layers of linoleum and luan sub flooring (I kid you not, there were actually 3 layers of linoleum, 2 of which were identical...go figure?!?). This resulted in a big pile of debris and a whole lot of sweat.





We broke for dinner (thanks to Suzanne, who made her famous black bean lasagna last night so that all we had to do was pop it in the oven and 45 minutes later, dinner was served!). With full bellies, we went back to work. My grand plan..or actually, Wendy Smith's "grand plan" was to move the fridge from its intrusive spot in the kitchen and tuck it away in the closet under the stairs. In doing this, we would actually gain some additional counter top and cabinet space so it sounded like a good plan to Suzanne and me.


Derrick and I started the demo of the load bearing wall by adding temporary supports to the ceiling joists. While I have never dealt with load bearing walls before, this turned out to be a fairly simple task...thanks to Derrick and his previous experiences. I was especially happy because I got to use my reciprocating saw to tear out the old studs and base plates of the existing wall...exciting, I know!


Derrick stuck around long enough to give me some pointers on how to frame up the new closet door for the chest freezer, then headed home to his family at 9:30 PM. With Derrick gone, I finished the rough-in of the new closet door, built the new divider wall that will go between the fridge closet and the freezer closet, and closed up the original door opening. All in all, it was a good night.


Next up, I need to finish scraping the popcorn off the kitchen ceiling, sand and mud the areas of the ceiling that need touching up, and then install my lighting and finally paint the ceiling. My plan is to try and knock out all of this before the bamboo floor installers show up on the 22nd of this month. It's going to be a busy couple of week nights for me for sure.