Beam Installed

Once the concrete footing was dry, we were able to move forward with taking down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. Jerry and Rich came by to help Dave with the work. First, they installed two temporary walls to hold up the floor joists while the wall was removed.

They installed a post in the basement (on top of the new footing), removed the old load bearing wall and put the new beam up in its place.

Here's what our "open concept" main floor looks like now!

Concrete Footing

Our drawings called for a 36"x36"x18" footing for the post, which will allow us to take down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. We dug the hole and had it inspected last week. The hole needed to be filled with concrete before the post could be installed, so that was our big project this weekend.

We rented a cement mixer from Home Depot and set it up in our back yard. We built a shoot so that we could pour the concrete through the back window into the hole.

Our initial estimate was that we would need 27 bags of concrete to fill the hole. We were pretty close - it took 29! Thanks to Krissy and Kevin for coming by to help.