I am so glad I went ahead with this decision to remove the doorway from the hallway. I can’t believe how much of a difference it made. Everything looks so much bigger and open now. I mean, I knew it would look more open, but I didn’t quite expect this effect.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that pictures quite do it justice, but since I can’t give each and every one of you a personal tour, pictures will have to do. Just as a refresher, this is where we started off just a few days ago…
And then I removed the cabinet to open up the hallway. Once that was removed, we could actually see the other bedroom door. That bedroom will soon be our closet and laundry area combo.
And now the doorway into the other bedroom (i.e., the one we used as our home gym until the floor was destroyed, which led to all of this redo in the first place) has been completely removed to make this one continuous, uninterrupted space.
Going from having a cased door there to having no doorway at all widened the area 11 inches. I thought it would be 12 inches, but we got 11 inches instead. It went from 32 inches to 43 inches. It feels so wide now! It will be so much easier and more convenient for Matt as he passes through that area. No more bumping into door jambs as he tries to get through the door.
The mudding and sanding isn’t quite done yet, as you can probably tell. He’s coming back today to finish that up. And as soon as he’s finished, I can get in here and start on my part, beginning with installing the flooring.
Here’s a look back from the other direction before the doorway was removed. I’m standing in the bedroom looking back towards the hallway. First, with the door closed…
And a view with the door open (and with the hallway cabinet still there)…
And here’s what it looks like now…
Isn’t that amazing?! I think even those of us who don’t use wheelchairs would prefer that more open space even if just for ourselves, but can you imagine how much better and easier this will be for Matt?
Now you can see why all of these decisions had to be made before I got started on the room. The first thing that needs to be done is installing the new hardwood flooring. But before I could do that, I had to know exactly what needed to be removed and replaced, if anything. With the doorway completely gone, I’ll now have to remove these boards and replace them.
It’s so much easier to do that at the beginning of the flooring installation process than to have to come back later and repair these areas.
So I’ll have to remove three boards, and then that will be my starting point for the flooring installation in the bedroom.
But seriously, can we just sit and stare and take this in a bit more? I can’t get enough of this new view.
Now, about my bedroom suite door decision, I’ve decided to go with these 10-lite 24-inch doors from Home Depot.
I don’t need prehung doors since the doorway is already cased, and also, the door jambs on the prehung doors aren’t wide enough for our walls. Many walls in our house have shiplap under the drywall which adds to the thickness of the walls, so prehung doors aren’t useful to me. But two of these slab doors will work just perfectly.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
