Peace Out Pantry

As promised in the last post, we began removing the remainder of the pantry that was dividing our Kitchen from the Dining Room.

Here's what the Dining Room to Kitchen view looked like when we bought the house.

This is when I began pulling apart the wall to the pantry.

I was stalled at this point for a while until we got electricity and I was able to rip through it with my handy reciprocating saw.

Before.

During.

During.

 

Almost Done.

After. Looking from the Dining Room into the Kitchen.

 

This little nook will become our bar area. It's at the transition from the Dining Room to the Kitchen.

 

After. Looking from the Living Room, through the Dining Room into the Kitchen.

 

We are going on vacation for week beginning in a couple of days. I may do some work before then, but if not, we'll post something after the 4th of July holiday.

Electricity, FINALLY!

After a long pursuit for permits and a long wait for the service company to come out, we finally have temporary electricity. This means things are about to speed up quite a bit.

We started out with the doorway from the Living Room to the Dining Room. Our plan was to expand it, and that's just what we did.

The original view from the Living Room looking into the Dining Room.

 

The view after we removed the wall to the right and removed the drywall and pantry.

 

Using the reciprocating saw was GREAT! Not because it's a power tool, but because it felt great to be finally cutting through the walls like butter, as opposed to the usuall hammer and pry bar that I've been using.

 

Wide Open Spaces. MUCH BETTER!

 

The view from the Dining Room, looking at the front window in the Living Room.

 

Next post I'll have removed the rest of the pantry still dividing the Dining Room from the Kitchen...

 

Rooftop Lumberjack

I went outside of the house for an entire week to work on this little problem.

 

This tree was covering half of the house, which was great for keeping the house a bit cooler, but unfortunately, it was beginning to damage the roof, and was also literally leaning on the house...not cool. It had to go.

 

This is a photo of a chimney coming up from the middle of the house...I'm posting it for reference, so you can see just how much of the house this tree was taking over.

 

Working on it.

 

It took me about three days, a bow saw, a pair of shears, and a machete (lots of vines) to get this far. The drill and hammer are there because I had to install some braces on the tree in order reach a few branches that were higher up and farther out.

 

By this point, I was able to finally see the chimney coming from our living room fireplace...it didn't look very tidy.

 

Here's where I was by the end of the week (notice the small chimney, our reference point from earlier). The living room chimney is a bit tidier, but I'm sure the flue is full of every kind of growth you can imagine.

 

The cool part about working on the roof is that when it's quitting time, you get an amazing view of Downtown San Antonio!

This is when I know it's time for a beer.

 

 

My dad came back...and he brought a chainsaw! *phew* (All of the work prior was done by hand...)

 

My mom came too, but she only brought supervisory skills.

 

Don't forget about clean up! My dad didn't stick aorund for that... Luckily brush pickup was the same week, so all I had to do was chop up an entire tree and drag it all to the curb. x_x

 

Time to make like a tree!

 

 

Goodbye Kitchen Bathroom

We left off last time with the removal of drywall in all of the rooms.

We'll pick up in this post with the demolition of the Kitchen bathroom. The house originally had two bathrooms when we bought it. One in the hallway which is part of the house, and another in the Kitchen (yeah) which was added to the house when the current porch was built...which I assume was in the 50's based on the condition of the concrete slab.

I luckily had my dad to help me out with a majority of the demolition of this bathroom, which helped out a lot.

Looking from the Kitchen at our future doorway to the porch. Obviously, I've started demolition before taking the pic.

I'm usually not the afraid of bugs, but this bathroom was infested with cockroaches. Not just small roaches, but huge cockroaches. Luckily this has been the only part of the house where I have found any bugs/rodents dead or alive, which is very surprising (that skeleton a few posts back was found in the wall right outside of this bathroom).

 

Looking from the porch at the Kitchen Bathroom. That window to the left goes into the Guest/Hallway Bathroom that we are keeping.

Bye bye Kitchen Bathroom, hello open porch!

 

Looking into the Kitchen from the porch.

Standing at the new rear Kitchen exit looking at the porch and out to the backyard. That wall will eventually come down to open the porch to the backyard...for now it's good security.

Facing the new Kitchen exit door.

 

 BTW, my dad, wasn't the only one to help us out today!

 

That's all for now...see you next time!

 

 

Long Time No See

It's been a while since the last post. The reason for the delay is because we've been occupied working on the house...duh. So, the next couple of posts will be consolidated to update you on what we've been up to for the past month or so.

When we last left off, we had removed the wall in the living room and we also disassembled the guest bathroom. Since then...

We made moves on that pantry dividing our kitchen from the dining room. We're about 75% done with it.

Before: Looking from the Dining Room to the Kitchen.

 

Before: Looking from the Dining Room to the Kitchen.

 

During: Looking from the Dining Room to the Kitchen.

 

Almost Done: Looking from the Dining Room to the Kitchen.

 

Before & After: Looking from the Kitchen at the Pantry.

 

 

Next we began taking down drywall in all of the other rooms:

 



This is the bedroom we are converting into our ensuite Master Bathroom and Master Closet. The door to the right is the doorway to our Master Bedroom.

 

Here's the Living Room after we removed the drywall. Door to the right is to the Dining Room.

 

Here's our Guest Bedroom. Door to the left leads into the Office.

 

 Found some counterweights in the windows.

 

The Main Hallway. Looking at the Guest/Hallway Bathroom, with the front door behind me.

 

A bit dusty...

 

Found some relics while removing the built-in bookcase in the office.

 

Close up of the findings. A few "Religious Census Cards" which aren't s surprise to find since the house was built by and for parishioners of the historic Calvary Baptist Church (now Childress Memorial) that was located across the street until a fire destroyed it in February of this year.

 

No clue what's up with the card in the top right, but I'm going to frame it and hang it in the office. I think the quote is fitting to be in an office. Also, notice the 5-digit phone number.

 

The letter opener has "M. Halff & Bro." on it. I looked it up and there's some pretty cool info about the history of that company. Check it out in these two links:

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fhadz

http://www.msje.org/history/archive/tx/sanantonio.html

 

 Also, found more counterweights.

 

 The Office, standing in the spot of the bookcase, looking at the front window. That door goes to the front porch and the doorway goes to the main hallway and living room.

 

 

Before the drywall removal, someone recommended that we leave it up and just paint it to save money. While saving money always sounds great to me, I knew this was probably a bad idea....glad I listened to my instincts.

 

Termites behind the drywall. Luckily the infestation is dormant and they didn't damage the wood planks (surprisingly). I'm guessing they didn't damage the wood because it's cedar?

 

I also discovered another thing...

 

Watch out for falling drywall when working on the ceiling...don't worry, no newbies were injured.

 

 

That's all for now...check out the next post to see what we did next!