Chimney Removal

Our house, built in 1916, had a chimney that served the kitchen.  Since it’s been a while since anything in the kitchen needed a chimney, the chimney was walled in at some point, and served as the vent for the furnace and water heater.  However, a large footprint in the kitchen was taken up by this chimney, and it wasn’t at all necessary for an exhaust for the furnace and water heater to have that much prime space in the kitchen, hence the removal of the chimney project. 

I forgot to take any “before” pictures.  Whoops! 

But here’s the section of the kitchen we’re talking about:

On the left is what used to be walled in.  The right side is the funky half-wall that used to hide the back of the fridge.  At this point, there has been no demolition to that half-wall.  It was like that, with exposed electrical stuff.  Of course, the fridge was in front of it, so it wasn’t really a hazard, but it was definitely odd.  And it took up more space than necessary, too, since the fridge was too big to slot into it.

The chimney’s already down in the pictures here, but the grey tube is a sleeve that was in the chimney.  In point of fact, there were three sleeves in the chimney.  There was only one that went all the way up and out – that was the one that we’d put in when we moved in and found out the chimney was in rotten shape from years of not being properly sleeved.  We didn’t know there were the other two sleeves at the time.  The cool things you find when you’re having work done on your house!

Here’s a different angle, looking at the same thing.

The wall of the girls’ room was opened up to get access to the chimney in the attic.  There’s the sleeve that went all the way up and out.  I can’t tell you have fascinating the girls found it to look from their room into the attic and into the kitchen.  The contractors were a bit nervous about that.

Simeon loves that vacuum cleaner.

Here’s Dave, directing Jeremy (whose feet are visible, standing in the framing around where the chimney used to be).  I can’t remember what they were doing, but I found it striking to have feet visible like that.

 

Oh, and you can see that the funky, code-violating half-wall is gone.  Turns out you’re not supposed to have a whole bunch of exposed electrical stuff around!  Haha!

Okay, so here’ the new framing.  A small portion will remain, since there’s a heat vent to the girls’ room in there, and Heaven knows we need to keep the girls’ room warm when it’s cold out.  You can see the new B vent (for the furnace and the water heater) – it’s all nestled into the framing now, so that we can have more space.  Ooo!  And the hole in the floor.  When they left for the day, they carefully covered that thing.  It was a good thing, too, because it gave me palpitations when it was open and Sim was on the loose.

 

See?  You can see right into the basement!

Here’s the framing for the new half-wall.  It’s more like a banister wall, really, now.  The space will be much more open.

So here’s all the framing.

And now it’s all dry-walled.  Looking good!  That’s our dishwasher, which is the portable kind.  Not that you can take it when you go out for errands, but that it rolls to the sink, hooks up, gets plugged in, and runs.  When it’s done, it goes back where you normally keep it.

 

The hole in the floor is covered, too. 

Now we’re just waiting on the mudding and painting for that stuff, then we’ll be ready to finish the floors and move back in!

Have I mentioned that we’re really happy that we’re not doing this ourselves?