Completing The Great Room, Phase Two

Continuing….more walls removed

Here is phase 2 of an interior remodel in Fairfield, Ca. This time we continued to open up the floor plan by removing a bedroom and hallway alcove with cabinets. Framing changes were minimal since there were no load bearing walls involved with the truss roof system on this house. This was all checked and approved by a structural engineer. Depending on your home’s construction, there could be a lot more work involved than just being able to tear the walls out. Care must be taken to insure that the wall is not carrying the load of upper levels or the roof system, and what framing changes may be needed to carry that load in other ways if it is load bearing.

Several electrical devices were relocated or eliminated as needed. Removing walls will often require removing outlets and lighting that are connected to other areas of the house. This must be taken into consideration determining how to eliminate what will no longer be used while maintaining proper electrical service to the rest of those circuits. We then also added LED recessed lighting throughout the new great room and a couple ceiling fans.

We patched the sheetrock, blended the texture as needed to match the existing and painted. Ceilings are one of the more difficult locations to patch sheetrock and blend texture to not be noticed. As the lights in the house or through a window shine across the ceiling, irregularities in flatness or texture differences will stand out. Done correctly you’ll never see where the walls used to be.

The wood floors were actually planned ahead during Phase 1. We purchased enough of the finish flooring material to insure availability to tie in to during this phase, and continued the flooring through the entire area. This meant pulling up some of the existing flooring from where it had previously been cut to fit the walls that no longer exist. The result is a seamless floor you’d never know wasn’t all laid at the same time originally.