The Living Room Wall Fight

the wall as seen from the living room side in May 2003 before the project

This time last year Seb began to tear out the wall between the living room and the dining room. We had a very big fight about it and I cried a lot. Not that I was particularly attached to that wall, but there was an enormous amount of dust. And, lets not fail to mention that I was 5 months pregnant and my hormones were raging. You just don't want to f*ck with the nesting instinct of a woman in this state of mind.

Seb had originally called up a contractor/mason in January 2004 to come out and evaluate his idea to open up the living room to the dining room. No small task, this would involve relocating the little downstairs w.c. and resupporting major bearing walls on two levels in the process. The guy said yes, he could certainly do it with some integrated concrete support beams and gave us an estimate for 5,000 euros (add 1,500 dollars for USD conversion). After he'd left I told Seb it was a lovely idea but that we should definitely invest that money in something else in the house. Oh, in I don't know, modern electricity maybe? radiators for the second floor? or, perhaps in a convenient INDOOR SHOWER! I was starting to get heated up already so Seb calmed me down and said, "fine, fine I'll just do it myself." At which point I just ignored him because we always say stuff like that in this house. I mean last Fall we actually talked about installing glass floors in the library and hallways upstairs. So you see I just systematically ignored him.

Fast forward a few months later to April 2004. Seb has decided he will "do a test" on the wall "just to see." Well, knowing how way leads on to way, I KNEW he was going to continue his "test" and start tearing out the wall. He did. He spent three weeks removing various sized rocks in the wall and got 1/4 of the way through the project. Finally he conceded that he'd better stop since the second floor was wavering a bit and rocks were falling like tropical rain at nervous intervals. Meanwhile we had our "I can't take it anymore--what kind of place are we bringing a child into--I told you not to start this project!!?" fight, so he boarded up the wall, leaving enough space inside to work on the project with the help of a ladder.


a view from the inside of his boarded-up "faux" wall last month

Well I digress. Seb has almost finished the project. He has brilliantly re-supported the walls on both levels, allowing for soon-to-come, final stage of the removal of the living room wall. He has come up with a plan to move the w.c. to the adjacent corner, and he has lived up to all of his promises. He has even talked about completing this in two weeks when his father visits to help replace the kitchen beams.



seb pouring the cross beam on the second floor


and the beam reinforcing the vertical support on the same floor

So it seems that the house is really going to look different in the next month. One year later and here we will be baptizing the seven month old baby S in May with the wall all gone. Renovation progress is a funny thing. It can seem painfully slow and then suddenly take off at light speed.

(Wow. I just used the phrase "light speed" in conjunction with work on the house. Now that's a first...)