Redesigning the floor plan.. opening up walls

If you haven't already, take a look at one of my earliest posts describing the floor plan in this E-11 Eichler. Did I say E-11? It turns out we actually have a E-41, but I'll get to that later.

So our original floor plan has a fairly large kitchen/family room, a separate (relatively small) living room, a bonus room, and four bedrooms. Family room has atrium and backyard windows. Living room has backyard windows and bonus room has a huge slider door to sideyard. I guess here is what architects/builders had in mind in 1959 when they built this house: The family is going to eat and hang out in the kitchen/family room area. When there are guests, people are going to dress up and sit in the formal living room. The bonus room is for storing junk, and you can easily haul in additional junk into that room with the oversized slider door exiting to the sideyard.

We'll repurpose the rooms for our way of living, and here is the plan:

- Former kitchen/family room: Party room! Did you notice that people always hang out in or around the kitchen when there is a party? We'll have the kitchen here, throw in a few bar chairs and a sofa. We may also add a small table. Of course, we'll also have meals as a family in this room either on countertop bar or on that small table.

- Former living room and formal bonus room: We think having a bonus room is the first step to becoming a chronic hoarder, and it is a total waste of space. Do you know how much $/sqft we paid while buying this house?! So, we'll combine bonus room and former living room to create our living and dining area by removing the wall between bonus room and living room. This way we can throw a TV on the fireplace, throw a sofa right across, and set a nice dining area in place of bonus room. While sitting on that sofa, you get the TV in front of you hung on a nice brick fireplace. You turn your head right and see a full wall of glass to the backyard (no fireplace towering in the middle of your backyard view like a medieval defense outpost as you'd see in some floor plans). You turn your head left and you see the nice dining area and whatever you got in the sideyard behind that oversized slider. (ok, this is a weak point, we got to plant some good looking stuff on that sideyard. Right now I see stacks of construction debris).

Of course, we plan to close off the boiler/washers area by putting  a new wall and creating a hallway/engine room towards the garage with all the boilers and stuff. By the way, Mr. Eichler, I think putting the boilers inside the house was a stupid move as they suck all the oxygen out of living spaces.

Net net, here is what our floor plan is going to look like after opening up that wall:

 

 How are we going to open that wall? Well, that is the big project. Please read on..