Dream project, plan B

OK, so I’m back with an update on our dream plan I wrote about a few weeks back. We had big dreams people. Dreams of extending the back of our house, moving some things around and creating more space where we want it – in the family room and kitchen.

And then we got quotes. First, I need to send out a double chest thump to the contractors who actually called me back. Guess what? It’s rare that a contractor calls you back. Who would’ve thought?

I called about ten businesses, two I talked on the phone and they were great. Most never called back. I only had two actually come out and to give us a firm quote, and of those two only one gave us a true, hard quote on a piece of paper. I’m already discouraged by this process. :)

I understand many charge for the estimate process and I totally understand that and was willing to pay – but out of ten I got one real quote. Thing is, they were all high. Like, CRAZY, you-are-freakin-kidding-me high. As I mentioned, we’ve had friends locally who have added on similar square footage and the price was much more manageable. Of course the contractors they used are no longer doing it. :)

We did have a few different roof lines to work into the plan, which increased the price. And running HVAC gets expensive too but our friends did that as well, so who knows.

ANYWAY. We could have done it – but at the prices we were quoted it just wasn’t a good use of our money. I’m willing to put some money into this, especially since we plan on being here so long. But it just wouldn’t have made sense to spend that much on this house.

So, plan B. :) I told you I wouldn’t give up.

Here’s the family room and kitchen plan I’ve shown you before:

To see our original plan go to this post. It involved pushing out the kitchen and family room quite a bit.

A couple of you mentioned an alternative in the comments and it has crossed my mind briefly over the years – I just didn’t think it would work. The idea was to take down the wall between my office and the family room. The wall to the right:

At first I discarded the idea because I truly do use my office, every day. I do want a space. But a reader suggested the loft and duh, that would work just fine. It would take some getting used to and I like being our main level – but by the time I finished putting things on paper I realized I’d probably have room for a desk in the new family room plan.

The thing is, I took down the doors to my office years ago – so it’s already open to the family room. When I really started thinking about it I realized how the two spaces are practically one anyway. I watch the TV in the family room from my desk:

Hello Charles. :)

And honestly, the more I thought about it, the more I loved the idea. And I think I would keep the board and batten look throughout the space, because taking all that down would just make me cry a little. I have a plan to just change it up a tad.

I contacted two realtor friends of mine and asked them if it was a good idea. I didn’t know if losing the office would be a bad thing -- I wasn’t going to consider anything that would hurt the value of our home. I sent them photos and both were totally excited about it and said it looked like a great idea.

Whew! So now, I have a new plan. Here’s the current look, as a refresher:

The family room and kitchen table area are the ones that are tightest for us.

Because sometimes I just like to look at things on paper, here’s my rough sketch on graph paper, with the office included on the left:

It’s not totally to scale (but close!) and I forgot to add in a couple current windows, but you get the idea. The triangle in the corner of the family room is our fireplace and the open area on the right is the kitchen that will mostly stay put. 

Here’s the new plan:

Now there’s still an extension, but it’s much smaller and it’s just the kitchen. The bay window would be knocked out about six more feet. Eventually there would be a banquet there with the table.

I’d work with the windows that we already have in the family room and make those into French doors with access to the deck. Minimal messing with the current wall should cut down costs significantly.

Here’s an idea of the floor plan with furniture:

That table area in the kitchen is not final by any means – I’m still considering where I’d put the door, the table set up, etc. I need to make sure we’d have room to move around there. The space would be about 90 square feet, 60 of that new.

The fireplace would move to the back wall of the house. It’s a direct vent and I don’t even think we’d have to move the vent on the back of the house. My thought is to add another window in the corner to make that a double window to balance out the French doors.

The furniture layout would change significantly – and to do this I’d have to move our TV above the fireplace, which I’ve never wanted to do. But it may be the best/only option. I’d love to do some kind of small built ins next the fireplace to hold TV components. The placement of things is a little hard still because the office is only about ten feet deep – so I need to make sure we could place things well and still have plenty of space to walk around: 

It kills me that we shopped forever for a smaller sectional and that thing is still a beast! :)

I’m going to tape off shapes on the floor to see how it will work for sure. I have to say, I’m TOTALLY excited about how this could work. It would make our family room so much bigger and completely change the feel of it. And my office gets GREAT natural light so the thought of all of that in the family room makes me giddy.

The wall that would come down is not load bearing and I actually am considering taking that down on my own. :) I’m STOKED at the thought of that. The gas for the fireplace is in that wall so I’d need to have that moved. I’ve contacted our flooring guy and he says he can patch the floors just fine.

I think I could act as the contractor for that part of this job like I did for the basement. I’d need to coordinate the gas line, the fireplace rebuilding, some electrical work, adding the doors and windows, flooring fixes and a LOT of drywall.

So. That’s the new plan. I’ve already contacted the contractor who actually responded to me, so I’m hoping to get a new quote soon. And I’m going to call a couple more one more time – if you are in the Indy area let me know if you’ve used anyone you liked!

Do you have a TV above the fireplace? Have you ever taken down a wall in your home? Is it as thrilling as I imagine it? ;)

Outdoor living

Hey hey! Hope you had a WONDERFUL holiday weekend! You can tell summer is approaching in this household – it’s getting harder and harder for us to get up in the mornings and my posts are getting later and later. ;)

This weekend was just gorgeous and I’m just so thrilled to have nice weather again! I worked on the deck and patio quite a bit this weekend -- moving things around, planting and working on little projects here and there. Loved it.

I got a bug to move some of the outdoor furniture around the other night and I love how it came together. I’ve mentioned before that I rarely move furniture around inside because our house layout just doesn’t allow for much of it. But it was so fun to tackle the outside – we’ve had it the same way for nine years now.

First of all, let’s have a moment of silence for our beautiful gazebo that used to be on the deck:

Sniff. It was so darn pretty.

Then this happened:

We got that dissembled last year and then things got boring. :)

We left the furniture over there with the fire pit and it’s been like that since early last year. We didn’t want to replace the gazebo just yet because I’m afraid the same will happen again. I’d like to do something more permanent like a pergola, but we’ll leave it as is until we figure out what we’re doing with possibly expanding the house.

So. This is how it looked Saturday morning:

Not bad! I was just craving a change. I’ve always wanted to move that table over where the gazebo used to be but never did since we liked having the seating area under there.

We built the deck in three sections that are on different levels – not sure I would do that again. But it does add some interest and makes the areas feel like different “rooms.” Since we don’t have any structures to work around now, I went for it and moved the table and chairs over to that bigger area and I LOVE it:

The old rug used to be red and white and now it is just…beige. ;) It didn’t hold up well so I grabbed a new one at Lowe’s. It’s a bit boring but I looked at Garden Ridge, Lowe’s and Home Depot and didn’t see a great selection of outdoor rugs this year. I figure it’s a good backdrop for more color anyway:

I LOVE having all that space around the table! Oh my goodness. The kids always play around the table and it always worried me in that middle spot before – with the chairs pulled out there wasn’t much room to walk around it.

Now I’m considering moving my DIY potting bench over next to the table since we use that to serve food and drinks at parties. I think it may work better up there and there’s plenty of room.

I was just going to move the furniture that was over where the table is now over to the middle section, but remembered the whole thing could make a big sectional. We never had it as one sofa under the gazebo – I realized it would be a perfect fit on the patio if I put it back together:

There’s still so much I want to do out here! Beyond some new plants and small projects I want to sand down that tabletop and restain it – the sun has not been kind. (You can see how I made that table here.)

But I really dig that sectional there – it’s a perfect fit!

I moved the sofa that was down on the patio up to the middle section on the deck with the fire pit:

It works so much better. I don’t worry about the kids now – especially over by the wide stairs going down to the patio.

Here’s a better look at the different levels on the deck:

I feel like this layout is so much more conducive to socializing and it flows much better out to the patio:

Every time we are out on the deck or patio one of us says how much we love it out there. We are so lucky to have this little peaceful oasis for our family.

It’s ready for summer and so am I!:

I think moving furniture around (inside or out!) is the cheapest way to make a space feel brand new. Do you have outdoor spaces that you’re prepping for the summer? Is it finally warming up where you are?

I shared my favorite “staycation” spot over at my friend Kate’s blog last week – can you guess where it is? ;)

Weeding the easy way

So today I have no pretty pictures – just weeds. And overgrown plants. And siding that still has holes in it from the hail damage a year ago. I bet you’re really excited! :)

I’ve been working outside over the past couple of weeks to get the beds ready for mulch. I saved this side of the house for last because…well, I hate this side. It’s ugly. I planted these bushes shortly after we moved in and I don’t like them. Not even sure what any of them are but they don’t fill in well and they don’t grow very big and I can’t wait to pull them out. 

That’s how I feel about that. ;)

There’s also a big open spot where there used to be another bush that died years back – the weeds have taken over that area:

Do you have these weeds? I can’t remember what they're called. I have a special name for them. I call them prickly *#@*$*%:

UGH. They will take over if you don’t stay on top of them. I hear they are really nasty too – you are supposed to get the entire root in order to get rid of them. Something about just pulling them will make them spread? I’m not sure, but over the years I’ve learned the best way to remove them.

I found this weeding tool years ago at Lowe’s I think – you can find it online here or at Amazon:

It’s called the rocket weeder and I LOVE IT. It’s my favorite gardening tool, hands down.

The bottom has a claw and a foot lever, and the top has a puncher:

So you push the claw into the base of the weeds and then either rock it back towards you so the lever pushes down, or you can use your foot to push it:

This makes the claw clamp down on the root and then you pull it up and push the button at the top to get it to pop out. It’s fabulous!

No getting down in the dirt to dig them out with your hands! I used to have a process of spraying weed killer at the base of the plant, then pulling them with my hands (with really thick gloves on). This tool gets deep enough to pull the entire root up (if not most of it) and I don’t have a problem with them growing back. Other areas, sure. But not the same exact spot. :)

The weeder even gets the really tall ones that are, ahem, a couple feet tall:

Have you ever tried pulling one of these out of the ground? The buggers hurt!! Hence the cussing. (When you toss them makes sure to grab them at the root to avoid getting stuck.)

So here’s my gorgeous after! Prepare yourselves for the beauty!:

Ugly bushes and holes in the siding are still there, yes. But the weeds are gone! :)

I’m waiting to address this area till we hear back on quotes for the possible dream project in the back – this area will get a lot of wear from trucks if we go ahead with it.

But at least the prickly weeds are gone, and I barely had to do any work:

I seriously love this thing! I use it in the yard for dandelions too. I mean, if you have a ton it’s not your best option, but it makes quick and easy work of a few here and there. It’s quite satisfying to use too. :)

Do you have a garden tool you can’t live without? Any advice on the weeds?

Desk do over

Hello all! Hope your weekend and holiday was wonderful! Our Easter ended up being a lot more low key than we planned and it was great! My boy played outside pretty much all day long yesterday and it was fabulous – this is the weather we’ve been waiting for!

So the project I’m sharing today was frustrating – sometimes you put a lot of time into something and it ends up not working. Well, it may work great – but it just isn’t what you envisioned. It’ll make more sense in a bit. :)

I mentioned last week that I’d like a smaller desk in my office. We have a couple options in the house that I thought would work as a replacement – I tried the first and it was way too big (too long). The second was this small desk I got from HomeGoods years back:

In that spot it was mostly decorative – you can tell by the height of the chair that there wasn’t a lot of leg room there to sit. The desk was low and the middle section was in the way. I tried a couple different chairs and that one is actually the only one low enough for it – the desk just isn’t made to function I guess? (Which I didn’t realize till getting hit home and taking off all the tags, of course.) Weird.

So I pulled it into the office to see if I liked the size. It’s about half the width of my current table and I LOVED how it opened up the space. I actually placed it at an angle in the room and loved how it looked in there.

But as I mentioned, I couldn’t really sit at it. So I did some checking – first to see how much I would need to raise the desk to make it work for me. Then I looked at the legs closer and figured out that everything came off easily – the feet first, then the cross bars:

Then I was able to take the legs off as well. This was going so well! :)

I ran to the hardware store and grabbed a 2 1/2 by 2 1/2 board – when I got home I cut it down to size and installed it on the bottom of the desk:

Then I reinstalled these little doodads that the legs screwed into:

I was making a mess, as you can see. :)

So far so good – it was actually going fast and easy and I put the legs back on and the height was great!

Little issue. When I sit at my desk I rarely sit with two legs on the floor. I pull them up and tuck them under, or sit criss cross, whatever – I LOVE to have my legs up. Because of that I need extra space under the desk that normally wouldn’t be needed. My current table/desk works great because it has a small apron that doesn’t get in the way of my legs.

I tried sitting at the desk as it was but couldn’t handle not being able to pull my legs up. It’s my thing I guess. So…plan B happened. It got ugly before it got better:

I cut the middle section away with a jigsaw (it was just thin particle board) – not all the way back, but enough for my legs to be able to fit in. The photo above was a rough cut – I evened it all out and then used some small trim molding to cover up the rough edges.

It actually worked out great! I wanted to paint the desk anyway so these changes weren’t any big deal. The painting is where things went downhill. ;)

We took it outside so I could spray paint it – with all the detail on the legs and the grooves in the top I knew that would be the best option. I sanded it down lightly first, then spray primed it, then started painting the final color.

I loved my navy blue lamps in the master bedroom so much, I figured a navy blue desk would look great. My office is light but I thought having more of a statement in the desk would work.

It did not. :)

I didn’t even take pics of it in the room – we put it in there and I had to pull it back out immediately. HATED it. Don’t hate the desk, hate in in the room:

Did I mention I ran to the hardware store ten minutes before closing to get more spray paint cause I ran out? And then the color didn’t even work. GAH. (I wasn’t 100 percent sold on it outside in the sun but thought it would look different inside.)

And the spray paint covered really crappy. It can get a cloudy look if you don’t apply it just so – this was user error though. When you’re painting smaller projects this won’t happen as badly because it’s easier to get good coverage. With larger furniture it’s hard to get it just right.

Thing is, both the new height and the cut out turned out great, and I love how the changes look!:

The color is just all kinds of wrong. :) I actually like the navy on the desk, I just think it needs to be a deeper blue.

I’m determined to use it somewhere though – I have a couple spots in mind for it as is (I’ll touch up the uneven spray paint if it works). If I don’t like the blue I’ll be painting it, again. :)

One thing I’ve learned – I’ll need to stick with the table-as-desk idea, for the way I work…err, sit. I’ve been searching on Craigslist here and there for months and haven’t found anything that would work.

Something like this on a smaller scale would be ideal:

I’ve been thinking lately I could just DIY something, since the size I want is so specific:

(source)

And then I came across this small table from IKEA:

It’s a little plain but only $40 and the perfect size. I think I’m leaning towards making something though. We will see!

All I know is the desk will NOT be navy blue. :) Live and learn. Most of the time I put into this project was spray painting – extending the legs only took about 30 minutes.

All in all not a complete waste, so I can’t be too bummed about it. For now I continue to sit at my gigantor table/desk in my office with my legs crossed. :)

Have you had any projects that didn’t turn out the way you envisioned? I happens to all of us at some point! Were you able to salvage it?

The room you’ve never seen

Dun dun dunnnnn. That sounded a bit ominous right?

I shared a bit of of this space back when I showed you how to switch out your door knobs but other than that I don’t think it’s a room I’ve ever shown on the blog. Mainly because I’ve hardly touched it for years now.

But I’ve been planning some big changes to this space for the past year or so, so I figured it was time to share the current pics (and some of my plans!). I decorated this room about eight years ago now – I honestly can’t remember if I did this when I was pregnant with our boy or if I did it after, but either way it’s been awhile and it’s looked the same since.

My stepdaughter also used this space for a long time and our guests use it too – I’m sure they appreciate the little touches I added. ;) This is one of those spaces that is not at all what I would do now but I’m proud of it and it brings back really sweet memories. It was done early on, just a couple years after moving into our home and every bit of it was done with love. (All of the rooms in our house are but the kid’s spaces give my heart that extra tug.)

I painted the walls a pretty yellow and the ceiling the same blue as the Bub’s room:

Bear with me on the lighting in here – it’s pretty horrible and the yellow walls don’t help. More on that later. :)

I installed the crown molding – the “cheater” way I showed you here – and a wall of beadboard as well:

No idea why I stopped with the one wall. I must have gotten tired.

I framed out the mirror with wood trim and went a little stencil crazy:

For a long time there was a little Goodwill medicine cabinet where the “E” is now but I replaced it about a year ago. I think that’s the one update I’ve made in all these years.

I added little touches like a little DIY towel hook and some letters in the shower room with what are supposed to be bubbles on them but have always looked like paw prints:

  

But there’s a big issue with this bathroom that I thought I would love at first. The whole separation thing – one “room” with the vanity and one with the toilet and shower – has not worked out well.

In fact, it drives me a little crazy. :) This isn’t a small bathroom (not very wide but it is long) but it feels SO tight because it’s broken into two spaces. That back room with the shower is so dark and small, we pretty much hate being in there:

I thought the separated rooms was so unique when we built the house, but within months I was cursing it.

So…I have a plan. The easy stuff first! I want to do one of two things to the vanity area -- cut down the countertop and place a tall, painted hutch or something similar there for storage. Or extend the vanity and make it twice as big. As of a couple years ago our cabinet design was still being produced, so I could just add on to the ones that are there. We chose one sink when we built and only need one – but for resale (someday, long time from now) I think adding another one may be worth it. I just need to see how much of a pain that would be.

One thing I know – I’ve wanted to paint the cabinets a navy blue for some time now, and Megan’s vanity convinced me:

Jen’s navy blue looks great too, I’m pretty sure this is the direction I’ll go:

I also considered a kelly green, but I think the dark blue is calling my name. :)

I want the vinyl floors gone and right now I’m planning on the laundry room tile instead:

It was crazy affordable and I LOVE how it looks.

Of course the wall color will change, but I have no idea what it will be just yet.

But there’s a couple biggies I’d like to add too. One is a window above the shower. I know windows and showers don’t always mix, but I’m thinking a long, skinny one well above the shower, just to allow some natural light in this space. That back area especially is so dark and dreary. Are windows near showers asking for trouble?

And THEN…about a year ago I saw this photo in This Old House and I haven’t gotten it out of my head since:

It’s hard to tell from the little before photo, but it was a similar set up as ours. This bathroom is much wider than ours, but the idea is the same. They took down the wall between the two rooms and opened it up – LOVE it. I like that this one shows the difference taking down that wall made without adding a window too – maybe we wouldn’t add one? (Adding a window is a big deal, at least it seems like it.)

And then I saw this bathroom at Houzz the other day and it made me even more determined to take down that wall:

I can’t even believe the difference it makes! That bath is a very similar size as ours and it looks twice as big without that wall.

I’ve ALWAYS wanted to knock down a wall in our house. I blame the DIY Network. This may be my chance to do just that! I’m giddy at the thought. :)

For the most part I’ve not focused on the rooms in our home that are supposed to bring more value – the kitchen and bathrooms. I’ve had big plans for our kitchen for awhile but I don’t know when it will happen, and our bathroom is totally functional so I’ve never made it a priority. And I know it will not be cheap! But I’m starting to get an itch to update these spaces – I think it must be the ten year itch. :)

Do you have a separated bathroom like ours? Do you love it or hate it? Any windows in the shower people who want to chime in?

 

P.S. The pin it button is now on all of my photos but I ask you visit the original source to pin from there.