Demolition Derby!

I decided to start my week off with a little destruction. Of all the phases of renovation, demolition is one of my favorite, second only to the final phase of placing the last piece of trim or hanging the last picture.  There is no other part of renovation where you can see the most change with the least skill and time.

In this project we are expanding one of the smaller bedrooms by incorporating a large master closet to make that the new master bedroom. Since we won't be living here, we really don't need a giant walk-in closet.  Demolishing the wall between the bedroom and closet took less than one hour.  So here are the before and after pictures, sorry for the picture quality, I only had my Blackberry with me:

There's nothing like swinging a sledgehammer with abandon.  My 11 year old was very disappointed that I did this without him.  He'll be able to break up the big pieces of sheetrock to throw into a trash bag later.

There are two outlets along this wall, as well as a phone line.  I will terminate the phone line in the attic since we are not planning to have a landline at this house.  The two outlets will be fairly easy to move by removing the wire between them, running each of them into the old closet area (it currently has no outlets so that is good), and running a new longer line through the attic to connect them again.  I will try to disturb as little sheetrock as possible.  Also, the light box in the old, small bedroom was centered on the room but will not be centered in the expanded room.  I was just going to move it to the new center but now I am thinking of just running another lightbox off that one which would conveniently go right into the slot where the old wall is.  That way, we would have two ceiling fans in the room and my husband can run the one on his sdie to his heart's delight without making me mad!  It also means less patching of the ceiling.  All good things.

The other issue that I will have to deal with, once I remove the studs, is that there is tile on the closet floor and popcorn on the closet ceiling.  From what I can tell in the rest of the house, the popcorn comes off really easily.  I am debating whether I need to take a batch to get tested for asbestos.  The previous tenants removed most of it from the house.  It looks like it scrapes right off and the closet might be the only area where I need to remove it.  I have no idea how difficult the tile will be.  I am hoping it pops off easy because it is a really ugly teal tile that fills the master bath as well.

The new master feels like a really good sized room.  The old room was 12 x 12 1/2 feet and will now be 18 x 12 1/2.  The added bonus for now is that the old closet used to be part of the original master bath and so now this new master has an access door to the master bath. 

I think the next big project is the den ceiling.  We have cedar beams in a vaulted ceiling.  The space between the beams is covered with popcorn.  Instead of removing the popcorn I am planning to install cedar v-groove planks.  I have experimented with different stains and finishes and I will tack some up to see how each looks.  Right now I am leaning toward the cedar with just a clear satin polyurathane finish.  I'll try to take more pictures next time.