There are so many things I love about this house - but the low (six foot, six inch) ceilings on the second floor aren't one of them. Fixing them is a big project and will take a sizable portion of our budget - but it's totally worth it!
 |
| 6' 6" ceilings |
So, what's involved? The existing roofline is supported by a series of rafters, nailed into a narrow 1x6" ridge board across the top of the house. We need to swap the wimpy ridge board out with a structural ridge beam, comprised of 2- 12 inch engineered beams. The beams will be held up with structural posts that are posted from the top of the roof, all the way to the basement.
It's a big job for the professionals! We planned for a week's worth of work to get the major framing complete. The guys started by removing the chimney (it was for the old forced hot air, oil furnace), to open up space for the new structural support post in the middle of the house.
With that out of the way, they built temporary walls to hold up the roof, while they installed these big LVLs and their supporting posts.
 |
| New Ridge Beam Going Up |
And as the temporary wall came out, the moment I'd been waiting for happened - we had a huge open space!
Now that it was opened up, we debated a bit on how tall the new ceilings should be and decided 9 feet would be a great height. So new collar ties went across rafters, to establish the new ceiling height.
 |
| 9 foot ceiling heights |
 |
| Look how big that space is! |
With the new ceiling height, I had a lot of flexibility on how to change the floor plan. What seemed to work the best was to make the original hallway smaller and increase the size of two bedrooms.
 |
| Before |
 |
| To-Be |
 |
| New Walls Getting Framed Up |
The old giant bathroom can now be one family bath and a half bath for the primary bedroom with the new floor plan.
 |
| The old extra large bathroom will now be a full and a half bath |
Photos can't really show how dramatic the changes are. The rooms feel so much bigger and more spacious! It's a total change that will make it much more appealing to a new family.
 |
| New Primary Closet Getting Framed Up |
Pin It
No comments:
Post a Comment