Some people move. We remodel.

When we first started telling the neighbors that I was pregnant, quite a few of them asked if we would be moving. We have no plans to any time soon. In fact, Paul has devised the four-year plan to pay off the mortgage and own the joint out-right. Instead, we remodel. Both Paul and I love our little house--it really has been a great place for us and we have really good (for the most part) neighbors. I guess this is our way of making the space even more perfect. And it is cheaper than buying a new house.

The first remodel we did four years ago added Paul's office space while enclosing a rarely-used yet enormous (9x11) balcony to expand the second upstairs bedroom and add a walk-in closet. The second remodel last year took out the two extraneous windows that I HATED in the living room and upgraded the kitchen countertops. And yes, we're planning a THIRD remodel on our house.

One of my complaints about our house has always been that the living room is too small. I think this will become even more evident when we add in a little guy and all his stuff. Heck, we just got one hand-me-down from friends yesterday (a glider thingy) and already, we're seeing how things can quickly grow out of control and we can quickly run out of room.

When we built the house a little over 9 years ago, we had an option on what we wanted to do with a front room. Some neighbors left it open, others enclosed one wall, others made it into a bedroom. We opted to make it a guest bedroom with a door onto the hallway. We also added a shower to the downstairs bathroom, making it a 3/4 bath. This worked well since the bedroom door was next to the bathroom door. Except that in nine years, the guest room was used about one week out of the year so we have 1oo sq. ft. of usable space that hasn't been used much. Earlier this year, we moved the bed out and I bought a small desk and a new futon for the room to make it more of an office/den space. Still not used much but a little more usable than it had been.

I'd been plotting for a while another remodel that we might do to open up the living room space and make the front room more usable. I even tried to convince Paul to do it last year but he didn't like the idea. Enter the positive pregnancy test. Now, even Paul has had to admit that it wouldn't be a bad idea to change the house one more time.

The plan right now is to make what is the guest room into more of a den space, opening it to the living room. To do that, we'll enclose the door that leads into the hall from the bedroom and make that a solid wall. We'll then open a space on the wall that faces the living room and open it up with skinny French doors--something like these. I'd like to rip out the carpet and put in hardwood flooring of some ilk. We're then discussing buying a twin sleeper chair and storage ottoman and probably a twin air mattress as well for guests. The remodel will require a little bit of electrical work since we'll have to move the light switches and one electrical outlet but hopefully, it won't be too time-involved. We're not sure when we're going to do this--maybe even before the holidays. I've asked my friend who is a realtor about the ramifications of changing the room but because it will still have a closet, technically we can still call it a bedroom if we do decide to move (you know, since we've pretty much exhausted every remodel option).

Of course, of most pressing need is to call a roofer to come out to the house. It seems that the two inches of rain a couple of weeks ago and then last week's snow both found the leak in the roof. It's in the new bedroom upstairs (what will become Baby's bedroom) where old-meets-new after the first remodel. It had a two year warranty so we're out of luck there but thankfully, the damage inside isn't too much so hopefully it won't require an entire roof. Just one more of the joys of homeownership.

To give some idea as to what I'm talking about, I found this old picture from Christmas two years ago. The hallway door just visible on the left will be enclosed and the new doors will go roughly where the hall tree is--a little to the right actually.