The five inch move

I chalked out the walls on the first floor. The space in front of the door will be the mudroom. The area where the table saw is sitting will be the bathroom, and the plumb bob (the pointy weight on a string) is hanging from the stair opening on the second floor to check that it is in line with the wall of the bathroom. It is.

Here's the first floor plan again for reference to make sense of the lines above. The photo is taken near the bottom of the stairs facing towards the doorway in on the right in the plan. (Remember to click on the photo for a clearer view.)

See how the lines on the floor run right into the door? No good. These lines represent the wall separating the mudroom from the kitchen. Correcting this requires moving the door about 5" to the left.

The opening with the door removed

New framed opening done, starting re-installation

Yesterday I laid out the interior walls in red chalk on the floor and confirmed what I was already aware of, which is that having chosen a 3'-0" wide door instead of the 2'-8" door that I'd originally drawn, the door was butting into the wall between the mudroom and the kitchen.

The options here were to either have a slightly bigger mudroom and slightly smaller kitchen, or to move the door. There really wasn't much of a question. Move the door. So, what has mostly been "building" made a slight detour into "renovation". I had to take out the door, reframe the opening 5" inches to the left of the original, and then reinstall the door in it's new location. Easy to describe, but a lot of work to do.

Nonetheless, by the end of the day today I had it back in and fitting nicely, so tomorrow I'll finish up the loose ends of the project and go into coming up with a framing plan for the interior walls, order up some lumber and put 'em up. That should be fun.