This summer I knocked out the wall between the living room and the kitchen.  Like every other project I do, this one was a major pain in the butt.  I had to dissect kitchen cabinets, remove lots of crappy paneling, remove the support from a load bearing beam, replace the support under the load bearing beam, hope I did it correctly because I’m too cheap to hire an engineer, and make a little half wall.

I discovered that I really suck at drywall.  But that’s okay.  It looks good, it’s solid and durable, and it doesn’t smell like cigarette smoke and dog pee (which is what the old paneling smelled like).  The joints and seams are not that visible if you just avoid certain kind of lighting.  It’s all good.

See?  In this light it looks great!

In my opinion, it’s the woodwork that makes this house stand out.  And I had to get a little creative and a little unconventional to make it all work.  I’m not sure how well it comes across in the pictures, but that beam twists about 10 degrees along its full 24 foot length.  It makes it a real challenge to make anything square.  In particular, the walls and the kitchen cabinets.

This wall got a nice layer of turquoise paint.  I love color, lots of bold color.  Our house is a cabin on an island, so I expect to decorate it like the island, with the colors of the sea, the forest and the rocky land.  On a really nice day, that turquoise is what you’ll see when you look out past the shore.

I need to mention that if you feed a deer your apple cores, they will follow you for about an hour, looking for more of that apple.  I wonder if it’s legal to feed wild deer.  Maybe it’s not.  It’s perfectly legal to shoot them, but you’re probably not supposed to feed them.  Go figure.