Condo Remodel: Demo Phase

Today I went to the condo to meet the contractor at 9am. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much they demolished already. The whole kitchen has been gutted and almost all the bathroom. There is one slightly bad news and one good news:

Mixed (bad and good) news: The partition wall that separates the kitchen from the dining room cannot be completely removed. We can remove 2/3rds of it because there is a duct that runs from the garage all the way up to the upper unit. We could move the duct and the adjacent water lines to the corner of the wall, but I think it is not worth it for the extra cost. I would gain only an extra 3-4 feet because part of the wall will still need to be kept at the corner to redirect the duct into it and keep the water lines. I also don't want to have to deal with unexpected problems when moving the duct. If I keep a portion of the wall, the upside is that I can add an extra cabinet close to the kitchen sink. So the decision was to keep the portion of the wall that has the duct and remove only the other part.

Good news: There is an extra empty space in the bathroom next to the toilet area. This can be opened up and used for shelves.

Here are some pictures.

Kitchen Partition Wall - View from the living room. Notice the offending duct running through the wall. The wall will be removed from the right edge of the wall up to the stud right before this duct. The other 1/3rd of the wall on the left will be closed.

Another view of this partition wall.

Kitchen sink area.

Kitchen backwall where the range/oven will be. Notice the gas lines there. There is a duct in the right side of the wall, but it was used for a furnace. Contractor needs to check if it can be used also for the cooktop hood. If not, we will need to install a new duct for the cooktop and run it out of the building (with association's approval).