House Update #9 - New Joists | Gathered in the Kitchen

Last Monday, January 6th, the building permit finally went up in the window. It was a very glorious, long-awaited piece of paper! It had been 192 days since the fire…not that I was counting or anything!

Upon the demo work (and more) that had happened in October, it was concluded that the entire kitchen and sunroom (aka family room) needed to be re-joisted (that’s not really a word, but it’s a “Stephanie” word!) Anywho…that was a fun discovery…said no one ever! So the scope of work got larger and my heart broke yet again knowing that more of our 134 year old house was going to be ripped out, thrown in the dumpster and replaced. But, there was nothing I could do about it. The house HAS to be put back to modern day code.

Moving Forward with New Joists…

Kitchen:

The work began and we now have new joists. Unfortunately because of the new joist size, our kitchen ceiling is now being lowered a bit (like 4″-ish), which super sucks but, whatever.

Sunroom:

Not pictured are 4 huuuuge windows. Clayton and I are having those replaced, not fire related, but the wood on the exterior isn’t in the greatest of shape so there’s no better time than now to take care of it. The only windows on the entire house that aren’t original are in the sunroom and kitchen…so I don’t feel bad replacing them, lol.

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There are some issues with the rebuild design, and we are hoping to have them addressed this week.

Mudroom:

I’m super excited about some changes Clayton and I are having done in here. They are not fire related, so this is on us…but that’s OK! It’s super hard to follow without really seeing good pictures, but we are moving the stairs and door that enter into the kitchen (this was all walled in before) towards the mudroom more and giving ourselves 12 more square feet in the kitchen. We are then vaulting the ceiling in the mudroom, the flat ceiling towards that window (*squeal!!*) and I plan to install stained bead-board and hand a gorgeous pendant light. Above that ceiling now is it’s own cute little attic that we never used, so I figured it was a better idea to make it beautiful instead, lol!

Here’s a photo of our super adorbs mudroom (it literally makes my heart happy to have this space…think kids and snowy boots!!!) This was a little before and after: moving in and then a quick clean up! It’s hard to picture this being the space that is kind of shown in the picture above.