We Busted Through the Wall | #projectopenfloorplan
It seems like we sit around and talk about house projects for months and then bam! start several new ones all at once. Like on the morning after Christmas when Matthew tore out the wall of built-ins in our family room, moved them to the den, and then busted through the wall to the dining room to create a more open floor plan. I am so giddy over creating this circular flow our house previously lacked. It's going to make big impact and really help that long room feel more a part of things. Plus it will add in some much needed light to both spaces. I'm so excited about this project! I think it's my favorite so far in this house.
That's right, this view below of the wall of built-ins in our family room is no more! Two things of note; I never loved them visually and we needed that kind of storage elsewhere. The shelves always felt cluttered to me and that counter top was always full of crap. They were just a big eyesore to me and didn't' really offer any of the right kind of storage we need.
And here is the final view of the dining room before we cut through. We taped it off to be sure we liked the size and location from both rooms. You'll also notice that I moved the dining table to the back end of the space. I love this space as a dining room but something felt off to me before when we had the table stretched longways. You'll also notice the two tall bookcase towers were moved in here from the den. They used to flank the leather sofa. I'm probably going to want to paint those white and have Matthew trim them out all the way to the ceiling so they look more built-in. With the hole cut this new arrangement makes more sense. And it also opens back up some room in front of the fireplace for a little formal sitting area. Win-win.
In the den a wall of books on a bookshelf makes perfect sense. In our dining room, a few display shelves would be fun to fill up. In the family room it just added to the mess. Our original plan was to try to salvage two of the pieces to use on either side of the window in the new dining room space but we didn't really need that since we moved in the two towers.
When Matthew started measuring things he noticed that this wall was only two inches wider than the long back wall in the navy den. Hmmm. That sure did change the course of things. We decided to move the built-ins and relocate them to the den. The tops of the shelves were pretty torn up after ripping them off the wall so he's going to build new ones. But the bases with the drawers and doors were intact which saves a ton of work.
I'm posting about this in real time and my sweet husband is back to work this morning so the project is on hold for a few days. We've got the deadline of Tagg's Birthday this weekend so there will be more updates coming very soon! I'm not sure if he'll have the whole project finished in time but at least it won't be a construction zone.
Oh, and we're going to paint the built-ins navy to help them recede into the wall. Can you tell I'm really excited?!!
Pawleys Island Posh
