Open concept

The wall is finally down! Daniel and James were able to cut and remove the frame posts for the wall without much resistance.  The house feels so much bigger without the wall dividing the living space.  James was able to tuck all the wires through the ceiling into the small attic over the hall, so everything is prepped for when they rewire the kitchen and close up the ceiling.

(Sorry for the sideways video, but you get the idea)

Sue and I ripped up all the pink carpet in the entire house and scraped up the linoleum in the kitchen.  It was tough work, but it was rewarding to see big changes happening.  The original 1957 terrazzo floors were revealed and ready for polishing in the near future.  We left the carpet tack strips in place so that the terrazzo restorer could properly cut them and polish them into the terrazzo so as not to damage them more than they need to be.  There's lots of wear and tear, but we're hoping they'll be salvageable.

Scraping up linoleum is hard work!

The original terrazzo floor throughout the house.

It was time to head back to New Jersey and wait for the next opportunity to work on our little project.  We couldn't have done it without James and Sue!  I'm sure we'll be saying that about a lot of people by the time this project is complete.

Living room to kitchen where the wall was removed.

Kitchen to dining room.

The floor where the wall was removed.

Kitchen to living room and front door.

Dining room to kitchen.

One of the bedrooms where the parquet was removed.

We also confirmed that Florida is very sunny.

The wall continues to fall

More demolition!  The parquet was completely removed and the wall continued to come down quickly.  It was an original plaster wall, so the metal netting had to be cut through around the edges.  Luckily, the frame posts were just floating in the ceiling, so there are a couple feet of clearance in the ceiling above where the wall stood.  All of the electrical can be rewired without having to add a bulkhead between the kitchen and living room, which makes me very happy!

We removed the old kitchen cabinets while working on the wall in order to have more space during demolition.  They were pretty old and damaged, but we were able to save the upper cabinets to use in the garage for now.  The previous owner had redone the plumbing inside the lower cabinets, so those water pipes will have to be moved into the wall before we put the new kitchen in.  The sink will also be moved under the window, so more plumbing work for Daniel and James!

Demolition!

Reinforcements arrived on May 5th!  Daniel's parents drove down from Pensacola with a full truckload of tools, including a giant sledge hammer with my name on it.  As an avid fan of HGTV, all I wanted to do was rip down a wall, and this was my opportunity!  The kitchen and living room shall become one!

We spent the next few days working very hard to make a big impact on the house.  Daniel and his dad, James, spent a lot of time rewiring most of the outlets in the house and relabeling the breakers.  Eventually they will rewire and add outlets to the kitchen and split some of the existing outlets to different breakers.  Half of the house seems to be on the "bathroom" breaker, so that will have to change.

While the boys worked on the electricity, Dan's mom, Sue, and I got to work on pulling up the old parquet that was under the carpet in the bedrooms.  We were hoping that it might be salvageable until we could address the floor down the road, but no such luck.  The parquet was probably installed in the 60s, so it was barely holding on in places.  Wood chunks and sparks were flying most of the day.  We rewarded ourselves with a little Cinco de Mayo celebration and margaritas!

James and Sue's dog, Zacchaeus, the trusty helper.

By the next morning, I was ready to take the first swing at that wall.  It was an original wall to the house, but it closed off the space, wasn't load bearing, and really wasn't necessary.  Hello, sledgehammer!  Goodbye, wall!

Welcome to the neighborhood

It was great for Daniel and I to have the next few days to explore the quirks of our new home and neighborhood.  We prepped the bedrooms for a clean coat of paint which took some effort, probably more than really necessary.  The walls had a bit of a "chicken skin" texture, so we bought a power sander (fun!) and smoothed the walls, as well as ripped out the baseboards and built-in closet shelf.  As I said before, everything about this house was thoroughly installed!  The baseboards were actually one inch half round dowel strips installed at the bottom of the wall and about 3 inches up the wall to give the look of a full baseboard.  It must have been the style in the 50s.  The closet shelf was obviously a "home owner's special" and had to be ripped apart in order to get it out of the closet.  The clothing rod was a solid metal pipe!  Amongst the sanding and removing, we discovered that the rooms were once pink and mint green, the original yellow tile still lined the window sills, and there was parquet flooring under the pink carpet.  We thought that maybe the floors were salvageable, but the 50 year old glue wasn't holding very well anymore and the parquet would have to be removed too.  Before that could be done, we had to test out the new paint spray gun!  Once Daniel got the hang of it, painting took no time at all.  The set up took the most time, taping things off, cleaning the walls, figuring out how to use a stupid pour spout that was too small for the 5 gallon bucket lid, scooping spilled paint back into the bucket...

A man and his machine... and evidence that a pour spout got the better of us.

Pink and mint green paint layers.

Original yellow tile which we will keep.

During our many trips to Lowe's, we got to discover the neighborhood a bit.  Most of the neighbors have lived in their homes for awhile and get together often for holidays and barbecues, which is right up our alley.  When searching for a house, we wanted an intimate neighborhood with sidewalks, and we got it!  The lake that the neighborhood surrounds is stocked with fish and free of alligators, thank goodness.  Our little pups would be prime alligator snacks.  With the lake so close, there are many different birds that roam the hood, including wild peacocks!  They're everywhere!  They show off their feathers, hang out in trees, and yell at you when you hit the speed bumps too fast.  Our dogs are going to have a heyday barking at all the different critters.

One of our neighbors.

Upon returning from one of our outings, we met the next door neighbor.  His son had just returned from his freshman year at UCF, the same school that Dan went to, and had parked his car in our driveway since it had been vacant for so long.  They were very nice and happy to welcome us into the neighborhood.  Later that night while we were painting, our doorbell rang.  There was our neighbor, advising us to take the renovations slow, then handed us two cold beers.  This is definitely the neighborhood for us!

A fun and silly coincidence: the old air fresheners from the previous owners were labeled on Daniel's birthday.

Where do we start?

After the stressful and confusing experience of buying a house for the first time in another state, Daniel and I were so excited to see our little house in person and really feel like it was ours!  From the first time we viewed the house with our realtor to official closing, we had seen the house twice for a total of less than an hour.  We were ready to get in there!

Daniel took the earliest flight from JFK to Orlando the morning of May 2nd and I took the afternoon flight (the joys of flying standby).  Luckily, Daniel made it to the house in time to see that the electricians were finishing up their work.  Being that it is an old house, the original breaker box was still in place and needed to be upgraded for insurance purposes and modern electrical use.  It was nice to know that that was the first item checked off the list of upgrades, though some outlets still needed to be replaced to ensure grounding wires were intact.

Daniel picked me up at the airport and we promptly went to Lowe's to stock up on supplies.  We bought out Lowe's.  Dan and I were making guesses on how much the total was going to come to and we were both way wrong... by about half.  Aren't renovations fun?  We revisited Lowe's about twice a day for the rest of the week, trying to time our trips so that we didn't see the same shift of employees multiple times a day.  Luckily, Lowe's is close to the house.

We got to the house, unpacked the load, stepped inside.... now what?  We had no clue where to begin.  Daniel ran around the house doing little things here and there, changed all the locks, and prepped for the days to come.  His parents were coming from Pensacola to help us with the big items in a few days, so I chose to start with the first thing I knew had to go that I could tackle myself.  Wallpaper.  Props to the previous owners because everything about this house is solid, including the glued on contact paper that they used on the kitchen walls.  Thank goodness that's the only wallpaper in the house.  I scoured the paper, soaked it with a softening solution, and scrapped it to oblivion with a blade scraper.  I ended up taking a few layers of paint off with it, but it was coming off, slowly but surely.  It was fun to see that the original wall color was orange!  Gotta love the mid-century color pallet!  The wallpaper could have waited for a later date, but we were just so happy to see some movement in the house.  On to bigger and better improvements the next day!

Replacing the bank locks.

The lovely wallpaper, pre-demolition.

Probably the largest piece of wallpaper to come off at once.  Sense the excitement.

The original orange paint under many layers of paint and wallpaper.

The fruits of my labor.

Fuel and reward.