Like many homes built in this era and area (say that five times fast), our 1920’s home is tall, narrow and full of lots of small rooms. It’s perfect if you have a dozen kids that all need their own space (or need to house your ever growing lone chair collection– leave no chair behind!), but not so great if you want an entire family to have a meal together in the same place. See this is what she looks like from the outside. We also have a killer hill for a front yard that makes our big beast appear a little more spooky than she really is.
Today I wanted to dish about a wall removal that happened between our kitchen and dining room. Now, to start, let the record state that our dining room held our family of 5 just fine, but it wasn’t large enough to hold our local extended family for a holiday or big event — nor were any of their homes for the same reason. This of course makes the pressure (which is obviously self-inflicted — like any good over-thinker), to create a room that will house such an activity, immense. I come from a family that no matter how big it grew, we all dined in the same area, while wearing our un-ironic (at the time) Christmas sweaters, and thus I have every intention of putting my beloved family through the same torture. Somehow large gatherings are cool when Pokemon are involved, but less cool when it involves putting a napkin in your lap! *sigh* Kids these days.
Our dining room is a funny space. It houses an extra-wide doorway to the living room (unseen as it’s on the left wall in the photo above) and traditional doorways to the kitchen and front hall. There’s also a door that’s been removed that used to lead to the deck. Wait a minute — have we acknowledged the hideous paint in this room? Sure, sure it doesn’t look too bad from this shot, but the white ceiling trim has this, not-always-consistently-dark-green paint all over it. Although, it could have been all moody and on fleek (can we use that word when talking about decor or just our eyebrows?), but it was wrecked by bad application and lack of anything bright to make it NOT resemble a Hobbit hole. Move over Frodo, we’re movin’ in!
It also contained a sweet, built-in china cabinet with sliding doors and enough storage to conceal all drama pertaining to Taylor Swift and Kanye West inside — until I came along. Having lived in several open concept warehouse spaces in the past, I’ve come to love their floor plans as they tend to challenge our ways of thinking on how we use space and what things we can eliminate when we don’t have as many walls to keep stuff on. They’re freeing! Although it means you can’t hide your dirty dishes after dinner, it does mean you’re able to impart guilt on your guests to come help you tidy afterwards — and that’s what family events are for right? Guilt? (sorry not sorry Mom if you’re reading this).
Alas, with this structure, that wasn’t in the cards as our balloon-frame abode just won’t tolerate such stress without pricey, supplemental support and so I’ve settled for more of an “open as I can get” space. This of course means, that beautiful china cabinet had to go. We had grand plans to simply un-house it from the wall and build a frame for it and use it in our decor upstairs until we started in on the project. The cabinet had been built from scraps and was quite literally one with the wall so first things first, we removed the plaster on the dining room side of the wall and then started the demolition of the cabinet.
Now. normally, folks who undergo a renovation or repair on a certain part of their home tend to take a few precautionary measures before starting. They remove all furniture and accessories and decorative items and wrap in plastic or a tarp those that can not be removed. They might plastic off the area from falling debris or cover vents and open windows. Then — then there’s my husband. All of these seemingly large things are just too much when you’re SO EXCITED to tear something out. His love of getting a project started is not unlike a kid in a candy store or a 7 year old on Christmas morning. Truth be told, when every part of your home has renovation going on in it, there’s little place to actually move things too, but I felt as though I needed a disclaimer as to why our tables and other areas are all seemingly still full of stuff (and weird stuff too!) Remember this is real, real life!
So this is when I pause because y’all– removing entire walls from your home is TERRIFYING. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done it, there’s still this insane fear that the house will come crashing in on you. No seriously. It doesn’t matter how much physics is up in your head, that all goes out the window when you start removing studs. I’m O.K. with this guttural reaction as I’m the type of person who will go all Fried Green Tomatoes on a wall and yell, ” TO WANDA!” and demo things just because I can. So it’s probably best that my brain comes pre-wired to keep me safe. Moving on…
Piece by piece (you collected me) it slowly came down. Now, we should probably note that this wasn’t our first project in the home and obviously isn’t the last, but it WAS the first time I’d seen my husband with a rather cautious look to him. I found out later, he actually WAS worried about the ceiling caving in and although he added additional header support to help hold things in place he couldn’t be positive that this wouldn’t yield in disaster. When I was younger I thought I’d be living on the edge by now. I guess this is as edgy as Wisconsin gets.
As we removed the cabinet we uncovered all sorts of treasures that were built inside. For instance, there was a newspaper from 1957 that is packed with amazing line art illustrations and job listings for both women and men — because of course they can’t have the same job! Why I never! We found a shot glass, two feathers and a some coins along with a whole host of dead spiders. Ew. Gross.
Once the main support for the wall had been removed there was this tension in the air. We had reached the point of no return and no matter what happened — this cabinet was coming out! It was akin to the suffering that plagues you the instant you realize you want to take your bra off for the night, and then realize you can’t because you still have to walk the dog or take the neighbors brownies and you’re instantly annoyed. Aaaaaaand by annoyed I mean grateful for the opportunity to provide service to your family and to others — no wait, I really just mean annoyed. There were 5,000+ nails holding this sucker in place and it seemed it would never break free, but once it had been pushed off its axis it felt as though it needed to have been removed like yesterday and so piece by piece (he restored my faith) out it came!
Two sawzall blades later it was on it’s way to heading out the door. We took every last bit outside to our burn pile. For most folks, a fire in your backyard is held in a cute, controlled, little fire pit and you roast a marshmallow every once in awhile. In our home, our fire pit is the fastest way to get rid of wooden building material that can no longer be reused. First we strip reusable wood pieces and hardware from the debris and sort it out by like size and material. It’s sent off to find homes in the garage or out back in what we affectionately call “the lumber garden” (more on that later).
The rest, finds it’s way to the burn pile to die a fiery death, where it then turns to ash. It’s the cleanest way to remove old debris that can’t be salvaged or reused in any way, shape, or form. The ashes are then dug out every few weeks and we start all over again.
As an added bonus, letting your oldest tend to a 15′ materials bon fire in your backyard wins you serious cool points. It should also be noted that we live within a holler (see: yell, shout, scream) of the 3 firemen for our village and our children were trained in fire safety before they could ride bikes.
Now the space between the two rooms awaits its final treatments. The headers are in and we no longer worry that the sky is falling. We have a few ideas rolling around but as is the nature with working with found materials, you often work with what you stumble upon and not what you plan for! One thing we know for sure is this wall that leads into the kitchen will be covered in black pallet wood to help blend our homemade pipe kitchen shelving as we won’t be reinstalling cabinets, but I’ll save that story for another day! Thanks for tuning into our little “What’s Happening in Waldo” corner! Have you ever torn out walls? What sort of problems or things did you learn along the way? Let us know in the comments below!
I love reading this series, I feel like I’m living vicariously through your home renovations. 🙂
My favorite new series!
we are in the process of creating a master suite in our new house. We took down the wall between the old master closet and a spare bedroom, the walls of an extra hall closet & part of the wall in the old master bathroom. The demo is the fun part! getting to hit the wall with a big hammer is just satisfying. We didn’t have any problems, but a few things I learned was 1) wear safety glasses! dry wall in your eyes does not feel good. 2) wear tennis shoes 3) when trying to take down a wall in the biggest piece possible (ie the enter sheet rock panel) – don’t just focus on the bottom because that’s the piece you can hold on to…. the top might just decide to fold down onto your head (ouch!)
When we build the new walls, I really want to add in a newspaper or shopping add or something…like my own little time capsule
Heya! Never taken out a wall (though once did find a 1940s paper under old linoleum in a cupboard–was similarly fascinated at the time!), but just wanted to drop by and say how much I looove reading these updates and just your general reflection re: the pains and joys of projects. I’ve been stopping by every now and then to see what you’ve been up to for the past two years, and this might sound ridiculous, but it’s always been a huge comfort to read your posts. I’m currently in a living situation where I def can’t do much about the house, and I’m also reaaally not in a position to move, or take on a project–and lord knows I’ve been fantasizing about knocking down walls and tiling a kitchen (yknow, the fun stuff) for ever now. And aaaggh I get so frustrated, I really want to create my own space, put my creativity into it–but I know that won’t happen soon–but. Reading your updated, your projects, the transition of a space and how it went, the pitfalls, the time it took–the details, the fun stuff, the tricks–calms me down like you wouldn’t know. And!! also inspires. I live in a tiny (shared) house, but last year I redid/refitted all the lights wiring in my room, all inspired by you, and it’s been a blast. I made my desk of old wood, painted a pattern on my wall with a marker–all things that you’ve shown me how, and that I’ve been absolutely able to accomplish, the broke little postgrad that I am. Anyway, all in all, entirely out of context re: this post, don’t wanna be too weird about it but still wanted to say thanks for doing these!! Love your writing, enthusiasm, and forever appreciate you letting us live vicariously through your experiments. Hope to one day be able to have one of my own!
Gosh. I hate to be a grinch here I just have such mixed feelings about this post. On one hand, I love seeing any house get the love & attention it’s earned (especially if it’s hosted families for nearly 100 years!). On the other hand, the whole thing goes against my firmly-held belief that you should let the house dictate the design. Idk if I’m even saying this right? Super bluntly… If you wanted an open loft/warehouse-style living space full of industrial pipe shelving & pallet wood, why not just find a space like that & leave this home for someone who would cherish the floor plan & built-ins? Reminds me of when my aunt sponge-painted everything in my grandparents incredible midcentury modern home with forest green paint in the 90’s. Permanantly damaged an amazing home for a fleeting trend… BUT what’s done is done. I hope it turns out just as you’ve dreamt.
In this area of wisconsin you will not find any warehouse style places to live. All there is are the old houses with small room. There definitely isn’t much inventory in Waldo either. I think that the illness of a home should be embraced, but that doesn’t mean you should have to embrace the small rooms. People nowadays just aren’t built the same way that they were 100 years ago. Mine and my husbands 6 foot frames and tall kids would never be able to handle those tiny rooms. I for sure would salvage any molding I could though and re-use it
I love old house restorations too, but consider this, if the house was built in the 20’s and the newspaper built into the built-in was from 1957 that means it was added over 30 years after the house was built. It’s not exactly original to the house so it sounds like other people who lived there already changed the house from it’s original design, and I think that’s pretty typical of most houses. I don’t think there are many people who want to keep an old house exactly the same way it was designed, but there are enough people who do for us to always have some good examples preserved of the style and architecture of those eras. Some of my favorite renovations of old houses are the ones where they keep elements of the original design, like interesting molding or stained glass windows, while updating other things, like floor layout and bathroom size, to make the house more functional for the way people live today.
How was your grandparents’ house permanently damaged with paint? Paint on walls can be painted over, and paint on wood can be stripped. Did your aunt paint something harder to restore to its original state like brick?
I am also sorry to say this, but I feel you are not doing the house any favours, and the ways you do it are also neither secure nor ecofriendly.
First of all, if you remove structures of your house you are not sure are load bearing or not, by all means use temporary supports to prevent the ceiling from crashing down!
Second: sorry to burst your bubble, but your fire pit is everything BUT a clean way to get rid of your debris. You are burning scraps that contain all sorts of wood treatmens upon them. Your fire neither has a a controlled oxygen supply (which leads to incomplete combustion), nor controlled temperature (which leads to release of dioxines), nor any form of exhaust filtering (so you are releasing everything into the air your children breath in, including lead paints etc), which makes totally not the right thing to get rid of your wastes. The only thing that can be said is that it is cheaper than a dumpster.
Thank you for coming here to say this- I completely agree!
It’s dangerous to have posts like this on a DIY blog where someone is saying “he couldn’t be positive that this wouldn’t yield in disaster.” DON’T TAKE OUT WALLS IN YOUR HOUSE UNLESS AN EXPERT HAS TOLD YOU IT’S OK.
Add to that a cavalier attitude of “Oh yeah, all this old wood? We’re just going to burn it and let our teenager supervise.” I wouldn’t want to burn wood with unknown paint/treatment on it, much less let my kids do it.
Can’t wait to see it complete!
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Thank you for sharing. Reading this reminds me of when I was a kid (oldest of 4) & my mom decided that what we needed was a larger bedroom. So, like any loving mother & wife would do, she got out a sledgehammer & took out the wall between our room & the closet. We slept in the living room for 4 months 😉