It’s a Brick…House.

Now that the first step has been completed in our new stairs project, it’s on to the next! This part of the project is why red dust still haunts me in my nightmares. We had to cut through multiple brick walls. Like with a masonry saw. Like what in the heck?

In order to make room for the new stairs, we needed to remove a closet and completely move the entrance to one of the bedrooms to the opposite side of the new stairs.

We ripped out the carpet on the landing for the original stairs. Yep, that’s hardwood! It also goes into that bedroom you can see below. After we took out the carpet, we removed the closet. It was pretty straightforward and came out easily.

We started chiseling the wall, brick by brick. We were just trying to get a feel for the walls before busting out the masonry saw. Evan fired it up and went to work!

Look at the beautiful cut below! Perfectly straight.

We then cut through the second wall that you can see above. It may look like such a simple project, and for the most part, it really was! But don’t get me wrong — the masonry saw was heavy to operate. AND the worst part was that it was SO MESSY. Oh my goodness, red dust for days. (Ha, I wish it was just days…I’m still finding it.)

---

Once we finished the walls on the second floor, we moved to the first floor to cut through another wall. First we had to reinforce the upstairs floor with some 4×4 beams.

Just like we did upstairs, we started chiseling out some of the brick before using the saw. You can see there’s a concrete layer over one side of the wall but that wasn’t an issue at all.

We had to measure both sides of the wall and also cut through on the both sides. The blade wasn’t big enough to go through both at once — bummer! Let me tell you though, Evan is a master at handling the masonry saw. Which is a good thing considering we’ll have to rent it at least one more time to create the new entrance to one of bedrooms upstairs!

Cheers,
C