Building a Pass Through | offthebeatenpress.com

The living room in my house was always pretty tiny – let's go with cozy – it was pretty cozy. I had wanted to instal a pass through to the kitchen since I bought it. I looked into getting it done by a contractor, but it was really expensive. Unfortunately, the wall was load bearing, so I knew it wasn't something I wanted to tackle alone. My boyfriend's dad had a lot of history of doing larger projects and was generous enough to help out. We started early one Saturday morning by ripping out the drywall.After spending awhile at Lowes, we came home and built fake walls to support the house while we were building a proper frame in the pass through. On each side of the wall we made temporary supports of 2x4s. It looks a lot like you are in jail the whole time while you are working on it.Then we built a massive header for the space. There is my handy boyfriend as we are putting up the 2x8 beams. When we finished the header, we spend the rest of the evening adjusting the electrical for some track lights and started the drywall. We got about half of it in before calling it quits for the night.On day two, the guys finished the last bits of drywall. Then,I took over. I spent quite a few days mudding and sanding to perfection before painting. You can see here the before and after mudding photos from each side of the pass through. I had some challenges with the mud but found it pretty easy. I also watch a LOT of netflix while I was working to help the time pass by.Then came time for paint. I used Beach Blanket to coat all my lovely mudding. Here is a before and after picture of the living room from the front doorway. I was worried the track lights would ruin the openness of the new hole, but think these ones are just small enough and tie the rooms together well. There is a lot of stainless and glass in the kitchen.Here is another before and after shot from the other side of the living room You can see all the way through to the back door. The light spreads so nicely throughout the house now.You can see a before picture of the kitchen in this post from when I painted it red initially. I was going to do red again because I had the can, but the paint had gone bad so I just wrapped the teal color around. Now the red accents in the kitchen really pop and it kinda reminds me of a Coke bottle! I found the black and white runner on clearance at Target and thought it really helped tie the space up with the new black and white pillows across the couch.The plan is to eventually put a small bar extending a foot into the kitchen and frame up the outsides, but for now I need a break from all this housework! If anyone wants to come do it for me, I will happily take a volunteer, or two!

Building a Pass Through