A Hole in the Wall

I have been dying to cut a hole in this wall for YEARS and I finally got the chance.  The front living room is pretty dark and doesn't get a lot of natural light.  By opening up the wall it brightened it up considerably since the great room has several windows.  It's not a supporting wall so that made this project a whole lot simpler.  I started out by "framing" the opening with painters tape so i could visualize and be sure it was the placement I wanted.

The next step was to cut the power in the wall and let the kids go to town with hammers.  They had a blast beating holes all over it.

This was our first glimpse of the new view from the great room to the office and front living room.  The electrical still needed to be moved into the new header and the plugs needed to be moved into their new placements.

This let so much more light into the rest of the house!  We moved 1 plug to either side of the new opening and put the cables above the new header.

I still need to caulk/paint the trim, texture above the door on this side, and touch up paint on the walls and baseboards.

I also need to cut a piece out of our extra vinyl (left over from when the house was built) to patch in the floor.  The plan is to replace the flooring in the great room fairly soon anyway so it doesn't have to be terribly perfect but I'll try to at least match up the pattern.

And here's a quick Before and After.  I love love love the new doorway.  Of course, now I'm totally itching to case the rest of the doorways in the downstairs (4 of them) but next to removing a wall that will seem simple by comparison.