The main floor is 7 feet 4 inches and the second floor is now 8 feet in the middle slanting to 2 feet on either side.  We had 2 bedrooms with an upper foyer.  To increase the ceiling height downstairs in the living room to 11 feet we are taking out the floor of the riverside bedroom upstairs.  We don’t want to lose bed space so a sleeping loft will be installed  4feet  at its highest point.   The new living room is 11 feet high.

Living room after

Living room before

removing floor

View from living room

Another 2 sets of 2″x 12″ LVL beams with 4×4 supports had to be put in horizontally under the second floor to support the floor and the new loft.  Then we took out the ceiling below and the floor joists of the old second floor bedroom.  Pretty freaky,huh? One tool I highly recommend for demos is a Recking bar.

 It’s a huge crow bar that gives you the leverage to take down walls and ceilings without being a gorilla.  We installed the pine ceiling upstairs first so we didn’t need a ladder to do it.  Then Steve put in a header against the outside wall to hold up the new loft floor made of 2×8’s.  We insulated the floor to cut down on noise from the people sleeping in the loft.  Go to the link below for the post on finishing the loft above:

Sleeping Loft

In the breakfast island area and the master bedroom, we put in new 4×8 beams that we left exposed to increase their heights to 8 feet.  The floor upstairs is  2″x 6″ pine decking from Menards that is stained dark upstairs and left naked below.  It’s thick enough to be the underlayment and the floor.