WALL BE GONE!

HOLY INSANE WEEKEND OF CRAZYTOWN MADNESS!!!!

I’ve been struggling in my head with how exactly I’m going to fit everything… So many pictures and thoughts to organize neatly into one post!

I’ll just get right to the point… first (and most importantly), the wall came a’tumblin’ down.

Here are a few process photos so you can understand the full extent of what we got ourselves into! Nick and his dad ROCKED IT!

If you’ve been following this whole project on Facebook, THANK YOU for all the encouragement and comedy you provided us with over the weekend! I feel like it was a group effort! If you don’t follow us on Facebook, and would like to see more pics of our Wall-Removal Project, click here!

Knowing it would be a LOUD and MESSY job, the girls and I made ourselves scarce by leaving for the day on Saturday to my parents (where, with the help of my mom and sister-in-law, I baked 5 dozen mini pumpkin pies and 4 pumpkin rolls for my other sister-in-laws baby shower!). Paisley passed the test by sleeping like it was her J.O.B. in the pack-and-play. I’d say our sleeping therapy is totally working!

When we came home late that night, Nick and his dad were still hard at work!

On Sunday however, the girls and I were around. Nick spread out a drop cloth and stapled it to the sub-walls to serve as a ‘gate’ to keep the girls in the living room.

They loved all the commotion, and were fascinated with the lack’o’wall.

The ‘sub-walls’ that I’m speaking of are two temporary walls that they had to build on either side of the actual wall to hold the house up while they removed the center wall and put up the beam. In the picture below, I’m standing where the wall used to be, and you can see the sub walls on either side.

After TONS of work, the boys finally got the beam in place. And we all rejoiced. I seriously couldn’t stop smiling through this WHOLE PROCESS.

There’s still a ton of work to be done (redirecting the duct work, framing the ‘column’, patching the floor, drywalling the column and arches… and stuff), but the wall is GONE. And that’s all that matters to me at the moment.

It’s been a long time coming. And I’m sure all-y’all are tired of hearing me gripe about the wall! If you’d like to read about how we came to decide on this design with the column, and see a rendering of the finished product, click here!

We’ve strategically placed the loveseat (and Retract-A-Gate) in such a way to block the girls from exiting the living room for the time being while things are being finished. Nick will be working on this in the evenings after he gets home from work, so it may take some time to see the final product, but it’ll be so worth it! Let’s all be patient together!

The dining room is SUPER dusty and filled with tools and other such madness that could be a hazard to little people.

EVENTUALLY, the girls will have full access to the entire living room/dining room area. We’ll put the Retract-a-Gate on the doorway to the kitchen.

The girls are pretty sneaky. I can see I’ll be rearranging a few things this morning.

Phewf… how do you wrap up a post like this? I’m SOO excited for this to be finished!! In the meantime, you can find me cleaning 112-year-old dust off every surface in my house.

I’ll leave you with this picture of my sweet doily-dust-stencil on my secretary desk. Ew?