Enlarging the Front Entryway

While husband was throwing dirt into the excavated holes that were dug for the water leak repair, I started removing a wall at the front where my retail shop will be.

My daughter helped  for a couple of hours by removing some drywall screws, I did the rest of the dismantling of the wall myself.

Here is a rough sketch of the front of the house to give you some perspective of where I am working:

I am making the current bedroom and entryway in to one large room, which I hope to use in the future for sales.  I need to remove the closet area and the door into the bedroom.

The bedroom looked like this in the real estate photo:

Here's a photo taken from the entryway, looking at the bedroom door:

And here is one taken from the same spot, looking straight ahead to the door that leads into the kitchen (behind the wall on left are the stairs that go up):

When I take apart a wall made of drywall, I do not just smash it all apart. That might be quicker, but it's very messy and harder to clean up and remove the debris.  We take the drywall pieces to a transfer station in the bed of our pickup truck, so it's easier to take larger pieces and not just piles of dust!

I start by seeing if I can find where the drywall screws are and unscrew them.  If I can't see any, then I do smash a hole and see what I can find from there.  The man who lived here previously was a drywaller and he did a good job of covering his screws ( which is unfortunate for me in the places I need to remove walls.)

Once I locate the end of a board I then find the screws and scrape the heads visible with a sharp tool. Once the studs are found, you know the screws are spaced along the studs. With an electric drill I remove as many screws as possible and cut the panels with a box cutter knife into sections.  I took a couple photos to show how I do it.

Here is the closet wall from inside the bedroom:

Here is the closet partially dismantled:

And here is as far as I have done (or undone):

You can see the front door, to the left, just past the closet studs.  The two windows in the background will be in the workshop area.  I will need to make some type of a door or wall between this new larger room and the workshop to keep sounds and dust out of the retail area.

Tomorrow the backhoe man is returning to fill in the rest of the excavated holes.  We will need to get the area levelled out and gravel put in.  We do have a driveway that goes on each side of the house and around the back.  This will help with future customers to get in and out of the property.

Thanks for following along!