Pondering

Tom & John gave us some interesting advice and Mike and I are digesting the whole thing. I think we are also getting them to draw up a plan - a grand scheme of things, if you will - and we can then slowly decide what we can do ourselves and what we have to sub out to contractors. I would still like the challenge of being our own General Contractor but I think for now, my most important thing is getting the wall down between the dining and the living room. Once that happens, I can at least get the rooms in order and live in the way we are supposed to live until we gather enough money to do the rest of it.

They suggested taking the load bearing wall down which goes through the entire apartment creating a hallway. By reclaiming that hallway space back, it makes the place look bigger and more spacious. It sounds big but I'm not really intimidated by taking walls down - even load bearing ones. To carry the weight, one has to install a steel/wood header to take up the weight of the joists and we have enough height to the ceiling that we can afford not to do it in the ceiling.

My next plan is after we get these plans from them, to subdivide what we need to do - project by project. Some projects we can do (with friends) and some, I believe, we can do with professional help and some have to be done completely by professionals. But the process is something I will be able to get my head around once we get an end result we want.

I really should post a layout...