The living room wall came down

We got a lot of work done on the new living room this weekend. Took out the "4th wall" to the room and put in the permanent structure. We want to open up all three rooms, the living room, dining room and kitchen together, so we took out this post and two walkways in the middle of all of them and put in a giant 14ft header. We were really nervous that the ceiling might cave in on us so Andy built a cross support beam, which worked out really well. It was a little nerve wracking for a bit wondering if the ceiling was going to cave in, but it all worked out okay.

We had to take out our only cabinet in the kitchen that holds all of our dishes down since it is connected to the wall we were taking down. Our kitchen was a mess.

There are strange things in my walls. I have this corner "box" in my kitchen and I couldn't figure out why they didn't use the corner for a bigger cabinet. Until I cut a hole in the drywall while the cabinet was down. It's a piece of concrete, a chimney, except it doesn't go down, doesn't go through the ceiling and doesn't go to the outside wall. Going to be interesting to see what it's attached to once we start working on the kitchen. You can see in the picture below there's a plate covering the opening. Cute little metal plate with a winter scene on it from the 1940s.

 And the wall is coming down.

I live in drywall dust.

Before:

Currently:

                                     

The middle wall is gone, and the left wall is about a foot shorter. The header is about 2in shorter too, which is better for our tall friends. The post you see in the middle is the kitchen wall, which is definitely a supporting wall, so taking that down is probably going to be a bit scary, but now we're pros right?!

Now back to mudding and taping, and then on to painting. Still need to figure out a wall color... Suggestions?