Demolition Man

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it's destination full of hope." -- Maya Angelou

I don't know that it was love that made my husband 'penetrate' the wall that divided our new living room and kitchen, but penetrate it he did until the whole thing came crashing down!

And he did so within five minutes of taking possession of the house on the day we signed the papers.  I was plopping our two small children onto the kitchen counter with cheeseburgers and french fries for dinner (don't judge me - it was a busy day!) when I heard the first WHACK! of his hammer and saw plaster begin to fly.

For some strange reason, the previous owners had built a wall between the living room and kitchen.  It was obvious (even to me) that the wall had not been there since the birth of the house.  It's existence prevented free and natural movement through the most heavily trafficked areas of most people's houses, and we were completely baffled by their decision to build it.  So baffled, in fact, that my husband had been plotting his attack since the day we first saw the house!

See for yourself:

Now, the wall did restrict movement between both rooms, but at least there was a window so that people could still see each other and have a conversation between those four awesome spindles, right?!  (By the way, don't forget about those spindles.  I've tucked them away in one of the extremely unnecessary storage rooms down in the basement, and they will become a part of something else one day ...)

And here's the husband 'penetrating' the wall (ain't he cute?):

Within the hour, he had most of the wall torn down ... and realized that he probably should have put down some kind of cloth to catch the rubble.  (Oh wait, that was me who scolded his messy oversight...)  Fortunately, we hadn't cleaned the carpets yet ... or anything else for that matter.  After all, we had only been in the house for less than an hour at that point!

Slowly but surely, the wall kept coming down until finally, it looked like this:

Now THAT'S an open floorplan!  

We could not think of a better way to break in the new house than by ... breaking the new house (in a good way).  There's still some work to do on the drywall, and we'll eventually get that section of the floor taken care of.  For now, it's covered with a few cheap rugs to prevent tripping (not pictured).  

All in all, a successful first project!