The Great Wall

She Says:

The time came for us to blow out the exterior wall of the great room.

So we did.

We took it down and got it back up within 48 hours.  I only had to spend one night with only a thin layer of plastic sheeting protecting me from all manner of raccoons, possums, wild pigs, and other critters that go bump in the night.

He Says:

Obviously, this house has major problems.  And it was major cheap.  It's thrown several dozen curveballs at us already, but we're confident now.

So, we wanted a really dramatic wall of windows in the front, and we wanted to relocate the front door, and we wanted a much larger and better-looking front door...all of which adds up to a complete new front wall.

We added several temporary ceiling support studs and then removed the front wall.

The Woman really got into it with the sawzall and ripped down the studs.  Indeed we did get the entire job done with 48 hours...it would have been 24 except for the mushrooms.

Mushroom!  Mushroom!

The rotten area behind the old front door, when excavated, revealed these:

Yes, those are the black mushrooms of death.  they were growing, upside-down, under our subfloor.  Ugh.

We ripped out the rotten subfloor, and the rotten rim joist.  Then we repaired with new wood and subfloor.    We framed it for 5 of the 36x72" casement windows we had bought, and our new door with doorlights.

With new wood in place, we built the new wall, and sheathed it...

...cut the openings for the windows..

...weatherproofed it...

...installed the windows...

...and the new door!

We're pretty darn happy with the way it turned out!