My wife and I moved back to central Texas last summer and bought a beautiful place with an older 2 bedroom/3 bathroom 2000sqft home. We started Christmas Eve and took it down to the studs over the course of a few weeks. We have slowly been bringing it back to life and have loved the process. It has been a great learning experience.

For reference - this is what we started with.



Looking Northwest from basically the center of the house. Door you see is the “Front Door.” Living room is on the far side of the picture - through the partition, dining room is closest to camera.


This picture is from the same spot but looking Southwest. The kitchen is through the “Drive Thru”.


Yellooowwww Kitchen! Pretty claustrophobic in here.


This is looking down the hallway to the “Back Door.” The master bedroom is off to the left, a bathroom at the end of the hall, “mud room” area, and laundry area all in the this picture. The pantry consists of all the cabinets you see throughout.

Demolition Day 1


First sheet of wood paneling removed.


Paneling and Sheetrock removed from the wall that separated the Dining Room/Living Room.


Same wall

Best wishes on you tear out and rebuild. My sister-in-law had this done on the house my wife, her and brother grew up in. It is really amazing what can be done to make an older house look brand new inside.

We decided the kitchen wall had to go(non-load bearing)..


Looking from the living room back towards where the kitchen was.

Also, we decided the partition between the dining room/living needed to go. This wall is load bearing so we had beams calculated to handle the additional weight. Braced the ceiling. Raised beams. Cut out wall.


Wall supported.


Looking from kitchen towards living room.


Beams raised.

You'll find them LEGO's are everywhere!

Demolition is fun build back is slow

We spent about 8 months doing ours almost six years ago.....

Lots of satisfaction once it’s done...

We pulled everything out of the back hallway to figure out the best plan of attack. At some point in this timeframe is when we realized it’d cost the same and have a better product if we took out all of the Sheetrock. We were hoping to just patch the walls we needed and go on.


What used to be part of the laundry area/pantry


Mud room opened up


When we bought the house it was a 2 bdrm, 3 bath with 2 living rooms. We needed to make it more functional for our family. This picture shows the second (smaller living room) that is right off the kitchen. We framed in a new closet and closed off the old entrance.

Thanks for sharing - look forward to seeing more as your progress through the remodel.

Good luck!

Looking good. I was wondering how you were going to remove some of the load bearing walls, I like your support beam. It is really going to open up the living area.

Curious is there a way to REALLY know which is a load bearing wall? I keep getting mixed reviews on this subject.

You would have to get in the attic to see how the ceiling joist are laid out and the roof supports bearing on walls.

Looking fantastic y'all. Keep the progress pic's coming.

This^^^^looking to see if the roof is supported by the wall or not....

Thank

These guys are right - the only way to know for sure is to get up in the attic. We got lucky that only one wall we wanted to remove was load bearing.


Once the house was stripped down - we had the plumber come in and bring everything up to new and working order. We moved toilets and relocated the laundry room. All plumbing under the house was replaced and pex lines ran for water outlets within the house.

We completed all of our framing.. new showers, closets, closed off rooms, opened up new hallways, etc.


Pier and beam sure makes it easy to relocate drains.


New tub in guest bath.


Oh yea — right in the middle of this phase is when we also started on a 120’x60’ barn for
the sheep. I have a metal building background - but with too many irons in the fire I hired this one done (should have done it myself anyway).


The day the concrete guys broke ground and began setting up forms.

Well - it looks like I took more photos of the barn construction during this phase than I did of the house.

We rewired the whole house, making sure circuits had adequate amperage and placed more thought in light switches, etc.




Forms are set - ready for concrete!


My daughter loved the telehandler lol.

While waiting on the sheetrock crew to get the whole placed taped and textured we got the barn framed out and brought in some heavy equipment to rework the water situation.


Looking pretty sweet at this point.


I had the most fun working the dirt on the dozer!

Yes, if done right....bad deal of not done right.....

Also depends on if its holding up the roof or just ceiling joists....

We had a local cabinet man build custom cabinets for the house and are extremely impressed with his work for the price. One thing I’ll never do again is buy unfinished cabinets (I wanted stained, wife wanted painted - so we got
paint grade and had to finish them ourselves).








New “mud room” bench


Laundry Room

Looking great.....

Looks great and can't wait for more pics. Wife and I are slowly remodeling the house she group up in, lots of work but rewarding.

Can’t wait to see the pics....really enjoy seeing these projects....

Got the countertops in, and you can see the start of our flooring. Wasn’t a hard job but it was tedious.


Bathroom countertop.


View from just below the beam.


Started skinning the barn.