Knocking Down The Wall

The beginning of the transformation of the kitchen has begun. It has been a long journey just to get here, we have had to have the consumer unit moved and all the wiring of the house shifted out of the way. We have also had the gas meter moved, the water moved, and got sign off from building regs – phew exhausting.

The builders are knocking down the wall dividing the kitchen and the pantry and also knocking down the wall to create a hole through the dining room into the pantry.

To do this they put acro supports before they can put in the lintel. The process is quick but creates so much brick dust , it even turned the builders orange.

You can see the lintel is now in place, but all the walls where cut are very rough. Knocking the other wall down was a simpler process as it was a non supporting wall (checked by a structural engineer and double checked by us and the builders! you can tell because the joists are not supported by the wall and the span of the joists is less than 5m)

This is half way through, we were so excited that so much light was coming through and the views you got through the opening.

We then lime plastered the wall and lined the gap with wood to create a neater opening.

Not much of a before shot as you can’t see through the wall but it was a lot less dusty.

We are now left with some gaping holes where the wall used to fit into the floor and to the ceiling. The ceiling is easy to solve as we are having the whole ceiling boarded and plastered but we have no idea what to do with the floor as we want to keep the old quarry tiles. This is also probably the first time you have seen our massive beam. The beam is the size of a tree.