Here we go again!

We are tearing out more walls!  Over spring break this year we spent some time at the house and, on a whim, decided to start the gameroom.  The gameroom will be made up of a dining room and an office that we don't use as such.  The plan is to knock down most of the wall separating them to make one big room.  Eventually this room would house a pool table, shuffleboard table, poker table, (that's a lot of tables!) and a TV area.

So Adam went up into the attic to check out the structural situation.  It does not appear that the wall is holding up anything except the ceiling joists, so that is good news.  We decided to make the new opening about 10 feet.  First we removed all the paneling covering that portion of the wall on both sides.  Here is the view from the dining room and office:

Then we had a little fun with the kids karate kicking the sheetrock out.  Here is what we are left with:

We also closed off the door to the office and covered it with paneling.  It is amazing to see a door disappear in a day!  I do a double-take every time I pass by.  We were able to save the paneling that we took down, although it was not as easy to put up as I had hoped.  We needed to place a full piece where we removed the paneling around the door.  They should have both been four feet wide, but it seems the piece we were trying to fit was almost 1/4 inch larger.  Trimming was difficult since we did it in place, but, once the caulk and paint were up, it didn't look too bad.

We have ordered a laminated header beam from Home Depot.  Once it arrives we will go through the process of building a temporary support wall, knocking out the studs (I moved the electrical after this picture was taken) and placing the header in place.  Unlike the master bedroom, we are not trying to bury the header in the ceiling.  In this case it will be visible, about 8 inches of it.  I am trying to decide whether to try to make it look like a hefty wooden beam or whether to cover it with paneling to make it blend into the walls.

After we get the header in, the next step will be to move all the electrical stuff around.  We plan to move the light that is currently over the kitchen island into the gameroom over the pool table.  It looks more like a pool table light than a kitchen light to me:

It has a pair of sidekick lights that will then be hung over the shuffleboard table:

It is always fun at this stage of a project when the possibilities are wide open.  We haven't really decided on any decor yet.  We know we want the room to feel darker than the rest of the house so I am thinking some kind of dark floor and a color on the wall.  I am thinking about either cork or vinyl for the floor since we really want something easy to clean up.  I am also going to need a lot of window coverings as there are four large windows in the room.  I would love plantation shutters but I am not willing to fork over the money!  Maybe some kind of Roman shade made from wood or grass will work.  I am scouring Pinterest for ideas but haven't found much like what we are looking for yet.

Hopefully it won't be so long until the next post!