First Floor, Part One

Here's what our first floor looks like. These first pictures are of what used to be a kitchen; it will be a kitchen again when it's finished. This room of the house is not part of the original structure. We think it used to be a deck, based on the foundation and the floor joists—it looks like the floor for the kitchen was put on top of a deck.





The picture above is the kitchen's ceiling, which is supporting our bathroom on the second floor. But the roof of the kitchen wasn't made to support anything more than a roof, so there's no structural support for the bathroom. It's hard to tell in that picture, but the bathroom floor is made of a hodgepodge of materials, as if whoever built it used whatever material was leftover. I wouldn't be too surprised if the bathroom collapses one day; I just hope one of us isn't in there when it happens.

Off of the kitchen is a bathroom and a laundry room. The bathroom was a full bath but will be just a half bath when we're done with it, and we'll put the new systems in where the laundry room is now. We haven't decided where the laundry will go; it could go in with the half bath, or we'll convert our current bathroom upstairs into a laundry room.

The shower used to be under the stairs; how anyone over four feet tall managed to bathe in there is beyond me. It was also the filthiest shower I had ever seen. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures to share. It took up a surprising amount of room, too. Both of us were amazed at how much space we have now in the bathroom.