The demolition has begun! One of the best, most fun – and least, most un-fun – things about renovating a house is that there are so many mysteries and so many surprises.

You can guess all day (and might even be right most of the time) but you really won’t know exactly what’s going on until you start swinging the sledge hammer. We have quite a few of those questions here and some of our decisions depend on what we discover.

Why is that wall thicker right there? (I’m always optimistically hoping it’s just the memory of a bad design decision, it’s usually something a lot more permanent, like a duct or plumbing – gross)

There were several obvious places that we were wondering about and of course, we got a surprise too…

It looks like that bulky bump out in the kitchen will have to stay, now it’s time for a creative solution to make it look more intentional…

This guy was a total surprise. Tucked in the corner of the spare room closet – this was supposed to all come out and become pantry storage… think again says the old house!

Is that a load bearing wall?

This is a BIG debate in this project. The kitchen is definitely an addition and there is no structure (a wall, or columns) below in the basement, which means – not structural. Not even a little bit. But it’s totally normal, and human, to worry and want to play it safe… you know, because even when we’re sure we’re right we are sometimes wrong and it would really suck if your ceiling started sagging as we have seen before. So we’ll see what happens here but opening up the ceiling didn’t give us a lot more confidence (photos to come soon).

But enough of the technical stuff, more juicy demo pics!

Why is the kitchen floor 6″ higher than everywhere else?

The probability was high that there were multiple layers of flooring in the kitchen that was causing the height difference. I’ve definitely seen up to seven layers of linoleum floor at a time before, but this is the first time I’ve seen multiple layers of full thickness tile. Well, tile and a layer of durock to be exact (and accurate) – and then vintage wood flooring under all of it because why wouldn’t you cover that up??

And just in case anyone is wondering – this is a great example of the energy of lazy.

We are hoping that we can salvage the wood flooring but we won’t know for a little while longer.

Then the other mysteries – are those glass block walls really original (well, no, but were they windows before, or did someone just punch out a really skinny hole in the wall for some light?)

Windows! Again, why wouldn’t you all but completely close off totally wonderful and awesome windows that would fill your space with light? I’m a big fan of windows in the bathroom and really, if you don’t agree, then you might be a vampire who prefers living in the dark and probably aren’t reading anyway.

..and that is the energy of knowing what’s up