Expand and Reduce? Yes!

Okay, I told you that I saw a chance to expand and reduce, so here is what I meant by that; our family room was 15' wide and 30' long, a long and narrow room, roughly 450 sq. ft.  We decided that by taking out the built ins would wide the room by 2' which would allow me to build a 9X17 room at the end of the family room, and while this would shorten the family room, the added width would keep it a decent sized family room.  to sum up, we end up with a storage room of roughly 153 sq. ft. and a family room of roughly 357 sq. ft. Sold!

Let the framing begin!

My boys and I began to frame the wall that will separate the family and storage rooms.  I also had acquired a fireplace from a remodel that I was doing, thanks Cody, so I decided to incorporate this into the remodel.  It is a gas fireplace and I will be able to vent it out the side wall, Lora is very happy about this, and we just hope to have it ready for the 2 or 3 days we may be able to use it in our Arizona winter ;-).

The framing continued:

 We added some can lights and I framed in a little window box under the return of the stairs which will be easier to see in the next photos.

On to drywall; all the wiring has been rerouted, no new circuits so it was all pretty easy, just tedious work.  Had my good buddy Sean, at Maricopa Electric give me a hand on this.  He is truly the Master of all things electrical.  So, we put up some wall board and hooked up the can lights.

If you look closely you can make out a framed section under the stair return.  This is where will will hang a picture of Christ that we love, or we can use if for a nice family photo or whatever.





I decided to cut down the stairs so I could add a railing with open sided treads and risers, I'm exited to see this when its done, I'll bet you are too, huh?

As you can see in this shot, the stairs had a pony wall which hid the last 5 or 6 treads from view.  I think cutting them down really opens them up and gives the whole room a better feel.

This has been a fun project so far, and I will have more pictures soon.  It is now drywalled and painted but I need to get the pictures off of Lora's phone first.

Hope you all have a great day and if you have any projects you are doing, let me know about them.  If you have projects you want done and live in AZ, send me a message and High Mark Construction will get it done for you.

As always, ponder life questions deeply  discuss it within yourself and if someone asks what your mumbling about just say, "was that out loud?".