October 26, 2006
Open Floor Plan
The first floor looks much more open now that the wall between the living room and kitchen is gone. We're going to keep it as unrestricted as possible by adding a pass-through instead of putting back the division, but this means installing headers in this load-bearing wall.
Someone had previously opened a five-foot section of the wall for a doorway; however, two 2x4s wasn't quite enough to hold up the top of the opening. It now sags visibly in the kitchen, and upstairs the bathroom slides to one corner. We'll be closing up that section and making sure the house is shored up properly in that area.
The neat thing about balloon framing is that you can throw things between the studs upstairs and they end up downstairs. Saves trips on the steps.