5 Hours Later

Once we had determined that the beam in our kitchen wasn't load bearing we got to work. That nasty beam in our kitchen went from this

To this (obviously the previous picture was taken quite a long time ago but it was the clearest picture of the beam I had).

No more shadow casting, room splitting beam. Let me tell you, it was not an easy task (as the title of this post probably hints to). We tried to do it as carefully and deliberately as possible (and we really had know idea how to get it down in one piece). We started by putting up some supports on the peninsula to hold the beam in place as we cut it in to manageable pieces.

Then we just took it down piece

by piece

Daniel did some calculations and figured the beam was probably around 160 lbs for the whole length of it (which would have been way too much for us to handle as a whole) so cutting it in to manageable pieces made the most sense.

For each section we drilled a hole through the beam at the top and used a reciprocating saw to cut the rest of the beam. Each section we cut was held up by our support walls so we didn't have to worry about anything falling or moving. Then we just jiggled the beam loose and pulled it down. Let's look at that after again.

And from the other side

It makes the kitchen feel so much more open.

I can't wait until we get the rest done but we are at a bit of an impasse. We leave for vacation in 3 weeks and have people coming to watch the pets. Obviously we need to leave them a working kitchen which means we can't start anything we don't know we can finish in 9 days (that is how many days I have off from work before we leave). Daniel is going to run electrical this weekend so we will see what we can finish after that. The biggest thing in our way is moving the stove. One of the posts is connected to the peninsula so to remove that we need to remove the peninsula. But, if we remove the peninsula we need to be ready to move the stove which means re-routing the gas line. That involves turning off all of the gas to the house (which includes heat and hot water) re-routing the lines from under the house and then having the city come and turn the gas back on. If we weren't leaving I'd just decommission the stove and go without until the plumbing and drywall is done but I don't want to leave my house sitters without a stove. I know, long answer to why this project may not be going anywhere quickly. The goal before we leave is to at least have the bedroom back together so that we can make the house look semi decent and leave the kitchen a bit undone for now. That way everything will still work. Here's to hoping anyway!
Have a great weekend all!
Cheers!