A remodeling journey

I alluded to a big house remodel project in my last post, so I thought that I would elaborate just a bit about what that project will entail. Our wonderful 2 story house was built in 1986. It is a nice house, but in 1986 people were more inclined to separate dining rooms from kitchens, kitchens from living rooms, and to have family rooms in the partially finished basement. This is not how we want to live though, so from the first time we set foot in our house we knew when it was ours we would eventually remodel it. We had plans drawn up to remove walls between the living room and dining room and between the dining room and kitchen so we could have the open floor plan we dream about (well I don’t know that I’ve ever actually dreamed about it but you know what I mean). We also want to add a shower to the ½ bathroom on our main floor so my Mom who uses a wheelchair as her primary means of mobility doesn’t stink so much when she visits us for a week at a time. We love you Mom, but you really do need to shower *wink*. I also really really really want to be able to watch television while I am cooking in the kitchen. There I’ve admitted it, I’m a TV junkie. We could rig something up in the existing kitchen, but then I’d lose the TV that sits on the desk in the office – so I can surf the web AND watch HGTV at the same time (after the kids to go sleep). Yes, I could do the same in the living room, but then I’d have to use my work laptop and I think our desktop computer needs the attention. Oh, and I want to be able to see the children in the family room when I’m in the kitchen, because quiet children are almost always up to no good.

After nearly completing the plans for our main floor remodel, we started discussing how we would live in the house through the construction. We do have a nice family room in the basement complete with a partially functioning wet bar (with a beautiful blue countertop *sarcasm*), so we figured we will create a pseudo kitchen in that area to get us through. Of course there is no functioning bathroom in the basement, and the prospect of walking up 2 flights of stairs when a 3 year old needs to pee doesn’t seem realistic, so we are now about to add a 4th bathroom to our house. The nice family room has a nice fireplace, that currently has a nice Pacemaster Treadmill parked right in front of it, and a barely used recumbent bike right next to it. In order to live through construction without the kids killing themselves on the exercise equipment we need to add an exercise room as well (or at least carve out a new spot for the treadmill). Do you see how these projects just take on a life of their own?

I can’t tell you how much I want to be featured on Designer’s Challenge, or a similar show on HGTV, but alas it doesn’t look like they are accepting applications right now. I do feel that as a home improvement/design shown enthusiast it is my responsibility to document the projects from start to finish. However, I’m not sure if I am up to that challenge. So my question to you is this: should I start a sister blog devoted solely to our home renovations? If nothing else it might be interesting for us after the project is complete. I’ll post a link if I decide to take the leap…I suppose I need to take some before pictures before we start construction.