Two milestones have been reached. After four weeks of work, four wagon loads of debris and hours of the most dirty, nasty, dusty demolition, we have finished gutting the second floor. What was four bedrooms and a full bath is now two rooms. Since this house is built like a barn the interior walls are not load bearing, they serve to stiffen the ceiling but do not carry any roof load. We removed all but one wall. When we are finished we will have a guest room and full bath and a large open area that will become Joan's quilting room with a small seating area by the stairs. In the picture you can see the current stair railing. These stairs are narrow and steep and are being replaced with a new open staircase. It will come up into the room just in front of where I'm standing. They will be reversed from the current stairs, they will start on the outside wall, go up 4 steps to a landing, then left and up 11 more steps to the top. They will be open and 42 inches wide. We are also relocating our basement stairs from the back porch to under this new staircase so we can add a 14 foot addition to the rear of the house.

Our second milestone is the completion of the new rough stairs to the second floor and the removal of the old staircase. What a difference this is going to make. The window you see in the picture will be removed soon and the opening closed up. Joan wants to put an oval, eye height window on the landing. This is my first attempt at building stairs. I bought a book about how to build a rough staircase that will be finished off in the future to become a nice, formal staircase. It was well worth the 20 bucks. The hardest part of building these stairs was getting the top section of stringers in place. Joan and Dwight where a big help. We tied a strap to the stringer section and Dwight and I lifted it up from the second floor while Joan guided the foot of the section in place on the landing. No one lost any fingers or toes so we did all right.

I'm now in the process of replacing the wall that will separate the staircase from the master bedroom. Then I need to build a support wall in the basement directly under that wall that will become the side of the new basement stairs. After that I need to build another wall on the second floor that will become the end of the guest room and will be placed directly on top of these two walls. This wall along the staircase will be a future quilt display wall and should look pretty nice.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough. If anyone wants to see our plans for the house I've added the floor plans to the slide show at the top of the blog.