Hole in Floor - Our Renovation Underway!

If you've read my blog awhile you know about my problem room. Built in 1954, our house had a narrow "dining room" that connected the living room to the family room addition (seen in the background of this photo) and the kitchen and den/office. The kitchen is another problem child as it has an awkward L shape. Nothing like opening your dishwasher only to have 5 inches of clearance to get by to the basement stairs.

Above pic, Narrow Dining Room, Christmas 2009.

Well, finally after living here 10 years, it dawned on us that we could relocate the stairs to the basement from the kitchen into the dining room*. (*which we haven't used as a dining room since last year when we made the former den/office the dining room.) Above is the tape marking where the new stairs to the basement will be. You'll head down the stairs from the living room.

BEFORE
The office/tv den (currently functioning as the dining room) was originally a carport.

NEW
Here's the new first floor plan showing where the stairs will be. This gives us a larger kitchen that is not L shaped!

- There will be a tall window too to let light into the space and down the stairs.

- The opening to the kitchen will be about 7 ft wide, flanked by built in cabinets on either side. From the front door you won't be able to see the kitchen sink but you will get a view into the far corner of the kitchen/family room area.

- It's also possible during the renovation that we'll expand the kitchen out a bit to the left, into the hall/stair space.

- The wall that is against the dining room will be the cooking area, our counter depth Blomberg fridge will relocate to the right side of the sink, in the corner. I also plan to put my grandmother's small kitchen table, with drop down leaves, in the center of the kitchen.
I love my carpenter! (aka my husband) Here he is, hard at work, starting to remove the floor. I'm not worried since he built our family room addition back in 2004. He might not be worried either, but I'm not sure how happy he is... As he keeps telling me, "I'll be happy when I have it all finished."

New Lower Level - Because of the slope of our lot, our basement is 2/3 above ground. After we renovate that area we'll have:

2 bedrooms

1 bath (expanded from it's current size)

TV/media area

Multi-purpose space with laundry, craft area, storage and wet bar for entertaining

I'll post on that tomorrow as I have to head off to work now. I've been off for 3 weeks so this will be hard!