Re-framing the Kitchen Windows.

P's dad and bro are here for the week...and they are taking care of business. They arrived Saturday night and we spent the remainder of the evening watching Alabama stomp all over the Florida Gators (War Eagle!). :) Sunday morning we pulled ourselves together and set out to start work on the house. After grabbing some brunch we arrived around lunch time and the boys decided to tackle the biggest project of the week, re-framing the back wall so that the windows could be re-positioned to accommodate the kitchen countertops. From what I remember it went something like this: "Let's re-frame the back wall"...proceeded to remove the existing windows..."ok, now what do we need from the HD?". There was much deliberation about how to go about the task (see below) and then we headed off to the HD.

After purchasing most of the necessary goods P's dad and I returned the rental truck to HD and returned to find this. No turning back now.

It was decided (and also recommended by our contractor) that the best way to go about this would actually be to remove the entire wall section, re-frame and then put new sheathing on the outside. So that is what we did. P spent a lot of time in that position and as you can tell I pretty much stayed behind the camera. Thanks Tyler and Dad!

Once the wall was cut through the weight of the ceiling sagged slightly and pressed down on the remaining studs (we thought the newly installed LVLs would pick up the load, but apparently not). After some quick deliberation P and I decided that we did not want to mess up the level ceiling that we had just paid a chunk of change for...so the boys put in a brace. Not the prettiest thing...but it totally worked.

Porkchop made a request that the wall be left open for his benifit. His request was denied so he staged a brief protest in hopes that if he was physically in the way his new favorite view would not go away. Poor Porky...it didn't work.

Sill beam with notches for previous studs.

After measuring we (and by we I mostly mean the guys) decided to stick frame the opening rather than build the wall and pop it into place. By this point I had deemed myself "light girl" and spent most of my time holding the shop light up and hopping around trying to shine it where it was needed most. Unfortunately right after they installed the header (around 9pm at this point) there was a knock on the door. Great. My least favorite neighbor had come over to inform us that we had woken him up with all the banging. Ooops. I did my best and sweetest "I'mmmm sorrrrrryyyyy"...I don't think it worked...I am pretty sure he has hated us since the moment we bought the place.

Time to patch up the hole. The plywood for the sheathing did the trick to cover most of it. (Sorry for the dust particles floating around in the pics!)

From the outside we just rigged up a plastic sheet from the upstairs windows to keep the rain out. It seemed to do the trick.

On Monday I headed into work and the boys went to the house to finish up. Unfortunately P was called back into work to help wrap up a competition (booo)...but work went on (yay!). When I arrived at the house after work this is what I found! Amazing. All that was left was to roll tar paper over the exterior and call it a day. It looks great and the countertop should squeeze right in (fingers crossed).

All covered up with tar paper. We will cut the tar paper around the windows when we put them back in. Sorry for the dust particles again!

More to come, including some demo work from last Saturday that we haven't quite finished and whatever those boys are up to today while I am at work!