Gates Reno

This is how our garden floor has looked for the past year. Some demo was done initially. There used to be three rooms down there and the contractor took out the dividing walls to make room for supplies and tools. This floor became the staging area for the work upstairs.

So when demo started for real on the garden floor, it exposed the really gross bathroom whose existence I had been trying to ignore for the past year. I was very happy to see it go, even if it only went as far as my backyard.

This is the only floor that really was gutted. While a lot of work was done on the upper floors, what was in good shape was left alone; rooms stayed where they were, with the exception of making one room smaller in order to make room in the master closet for the washer and dryer. On the garden floor, however, the architects and contractor all felt that the best way to proceed was to start fresh.

When the drop ceiling was removed, we found this:

Totally understandable. I can’t tell you how often I’ve found myself needing to write down a phone number, and I can’t find a pen or paper, but I can find a hot stick and a ceiling.

Once demo was complete, everything was framed out. While the living room-kitchen-dining room will all be one big space, the hallway next to the stairs was put back in to be used as a long coat closet, with a big mud room/storage area in the back.

All this crazy stuff you see on the kitchen ceiling will eventually be a very interesting series of columns (are they called columns when they’re on the ceiling?), with lights nestled in the spaces.