I’ve been holding my breath for the past month, becuase we made a BIG change in our house. We’ve been wanting to do this since the moment we decided to buy this fixer upper. I didn’t want to share the whole progress with you all for this project because I always take you guys step by step through everything on Instagram. This time I wanted to surprise you with the drastic before and after!

Dun, dun, DUN!

No.more.freaking.wall!

Are you shocked? Honestly, I still am too.

Scroll to the very bottom of this post if you want to see the before room photos from the day we got the keys to the house.

There used to be a wall there you guys! From the start, we knew that this wall needed to come out to make the layout in this house functional. But we initially thought that it was a load bearing wall (long story short- dummy me thought the joists running for the porch were the joists for the house…) When we brought a contractor in to give us a quote, he told us it was our lucky day becuase he didn’t think they were load bearing. So something that would have cost us THOUSANDS ended up becoming a DIY. So in the end, it just cost us a month of manual labor tearing down the wall, patching and repairing all the drywall on the walls and ceiling, and of course hiring out the rewiring to a team of electricians.

I’m also proud to report that Silas tore all the upper cabinets down too! I have plans for those blank walls. And you can bet I stay up at night day dreaming about it! Haha!

I’m just going to leave this right here: I HATE repairing drywall. And I hope I NEVER have to do it again. I’m a perfectionist, so I wanted everything as smooth as possible, and that stuff SUCKS to work with.

Over all, it just makes the space SO much larger & usable. Now you can literally walk from the front of the house to the back. We were initially going to place the fridge on on the left wall where the “hallwall” is now, but after seeing the straight shot of light & foot traffic space, we decided to move the fridge where we had been planning on extending the counter. So we lost an extra 4 square feet of counter space to the fridge, but I don’t care a bit. It’s just an excuse for a big old kitchen island.

The space the hutch is located is going to be seeing some changes as well.

Even though there have been SO many projects finished in this space, it still manages to seem like we are only scratching the surface.

I think the next thing that’s going to be done in here will be the floors. There were layers upon layers of cheap, disgusting vinyl tiles in the rooms on this side of the house. And none of them matched… So I’m super excited to bring some ascetic consistency into this space.

My vintage drainboard sink is already making the space feel more classy!

See the old, outdated (how was this ever a style, though?) before photos below:

All the trim in this house needed a major face lift, with some heavy duty Kilz Oil Primer.

This was the wall that the fridge was originally backed up to. We just switched out the fridge for a beautiful white one. Like we literally haven’t taken the plastic off it yet (I’m planning on doing that once all the demo is done)

Here’s the dining room, looking into the kitchen.

And note- no more popcorn ceilings!

I think it’s appropriate to end this post with a sight that will never be seen again- a wall between my kitchen and dining room.