Busting through the wall

Update: Our contractor just emailed to say demolition starts tomorrow!! Pray for dry weather.

So far there aren't any visible signs that construction has started at our house (beyond the permit sign). However, we know that holes are being dug and concrete is being poured to create footings under the house. Believe me, when the roof comes off I'll post pictures.

Until the exciting stuff begins, though, we are spending these awesome and sunny afternoons working around our "new" house. Peyton has been working to clean up the yard and remove part of the fence in the back to open up the yard a bit. Honestly, his project has taken many hours and lots of effort. And it's looking awesome. He's chopped down many little "junk" trees and removed lots of random objects (string, styrofoam pieces, sheathing) that's really opening up the yard to show lots of potential. My project has been out of curiosity and fun. I have put neither much effort or time into it. But look what I discovered...

It looks like the last heating source the fireplace was used for was a wood stove. Although I think we'll have a wood stove in the kitchen (which is completely bricked in), I think we'll try to bust through and have a fireplace in the living room. We're still debating between wood and gas logs for the fireplace. Peyton would like to use wood and I'd like to use gas...we'll see. Also, you'll notice the beadboard above the fireplace. Our idea is to remove the walls down to the brick of the fireplace and have only the masonry chimney dividing the living room and kitchen. Not knowing what condition the brick is in makes me a bit nervous, but I suppose we can always cover it back up if it's awful. And for the rest of the walls in the living room, we plan to expose the beadboard walls by removing the drywall that is currently covering them. But for the kitchen and the dining room we're going to keep the drywall on and not worry about the beadboard. It will likely be tedious work in the living room and taking the drywall off of one room will be enough for us.