Our intention is to correct, upgrade, or restore anything that we can gain access to before we paint and decorate. So the demo continues.
We were back in the kitchen today. We have all the undersized ceiling joists removed and will upgrade to 2X8's. The ceiling joists will only need to hold the weight of the bead board but we want to make sure they do not bow like the previous 2X4's that held an old plaster ceiling covered with a layer of dry wall.
Old electrical wires that are no longer in use have been removed. What a mess of wires. We eliminated quite a few and found several second generation wires that were live but not in use. These wires originally went to ceiling lights that were long ago removed before the knotty pine was installed. Rather than remove the wires, they just capped them off and laid them on the old rock wool insulation. Both the wires and the insulation are gone now. New batt insulation and rigid foam is in the plans for two reasons. First and foremost the insulation was old and smelly. Second it was doing very little to insulate anything.
The kitchen, as I have commented on before, is very dark. To help remedy this problem, we started to remove a short non load bearing wall. This partition wall is located at the end of the counter. Rather than leave the end of the counter open they ended it with a wall. This wall is adjacent to a large window but because of the wall sunlight is blocked from coming in. I would have preferred the remaining wall to be slightly shorter but there is an electrical outlet located on each side of the wall so that limited me on how low I could take the wall.
Notice how dark it is in the kitchen? That is R looking at the wall and deciding where to start. I scribed a line on the wall and he used the oscillating saw to cut through just the knotty pine. We then pried off the pine leaving us with the old plaster wall. He then used a reciprocating saw to cut through the plaster and wire. That left us with the 2X4's which we will remove tomorrow.Notice how much light can come into the kitchen. This photo was taken 2 hours after the first photo was taken. Look at those ugly windows. I can't believe they removed the original double hung windows and replaced them with these Anderson windows. All the Anderson replacement windows have wood rot, unlike the remaining original 75 year old windows that are still functioning just fine. These windows will need to be replaced with double hung windows that match the remaining windows in the house.
Removal of the wall also visually widens the room. The kitchen tends to feels long and narrow and the extra LARGE island doesn't help. We have to leave the island 'as is' because the cook top is currently located there.
big difference!
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