Why Red Rock House?

We are currently in the demolition phase of renovating our new home. Almost every room needed some kind of destruction to take place first.

One of the first spaces we tackled in this manner was the kitchen. We will eventually be adding on to the kitchen to include not only more space for our in-house chef (me), but also to include a mudroom and possibly a powder room. But first things first, we needed to knock out the plaster and tear down the lath strips. This was my job. I'd never done any demolition before and after my husband handed me that hammer I felt a little overwhelmed, but all I had to do was smack my hammer into that wall. Bring it down. At first I would kind of gingerly hit the wall not accomplishing much, but then I really got the hang of it and man did it feel great! Though I admit I did start to lose my umph when it came time to bring down the ceiling. I had to stand on a ladder and hurl my sledge hammer up to break it apart and even though I was wearing goggles, I think most of the dust from that ceiling ended up in my eyes. But I shouldn't complain. You should see the condition my husband comes home in! He looks like he just came out of a coal mine!

kitchen before

during the destruction

what it looks like now

My brother, dad and husband then did the same for the attic. But the results were much more dramatic because they also tore down two of the existing walls up there creating a big open space. It was hard to get a decent before picture of the attic because originally it had been divided into two rooms.

attic before

attic before

attic after

Then we decided that the staircase leading up to the attic needed an adjustment because the entrance to the staircase was located in one of the bedrooms and eventually we'd like to use the attic for either another bedroom or a playroom for the children and it would be nice if we didn't have to go through someone's bedroom to get there. So presto, my husband made it happen, taking out the staircase and building a new one that one enters from the hallway instead. The original hallway closet (the space under the old attic staircase) is now the new entrance.

looking up the stairs before getting the old switch-a-roo

stair-less, looking down from attic to original staircase entrance

what it looks like now

And finally, why do we call this blog Red Rock House when the house is obliviously not red? Well, one of the last things we will take down during this destruction phase is going to be the stucco on the outside of the house which will reveal the beautiful red rock that was used so long ago to build this amazing house. And it should not go without saying that even though all of this knocking out, tearing down and breaking apart can be a lot of fun (and exhausting), we are really looking forward to building it up again or as our daughter just said "giving it more love."