home

This is our sweet little home.  I've blogged about our house before, you can check it out here.  It's an old little house, built in 1896.  It has creaky floors, transoms over the doors, 10 ft. ceilings, and windows big enough to make any natural light photographer inveous.  And I love it.  Like really, really love it.  There is so much character and history here.  Are there problems with the house?  Yes.  It's ridiculously expensive to heat because the walls aren't insulated and the windows are single pained.  There's two entries, the front and the back, and since our garage is detached and behind the house, everyone walks in through the back door.  Coincidentally, this is the laundry room.  So everyone walks in to see that I can't keep up with my laundry.  Not ideal, but hey, it could be way worse.  We don't have a ton of room to host things, and I would love to have more space for that.  The biggest problem of all, though, is the fact that it's only two bedrooms.  When we bought the house 4 years ago, we had no idea that our family would grow so quickly.  Having only 2 bedrooms didn't seem like an issue when we bought it.  

And then Kason was born.  Suddenly, I feel like hot wheels cars and basketballs are taking over my life.

So when I found out I was pregnant with Baby G #2, we knew something had to be done.  We had tossed around the idea of trying to finish the attic and add on an additional bedroom a couple of years ago.  After going and looking at bigger house, with lots of storage and big living spaces, I quickly decided I wanted to just wash my hands of this little, old house and move on.  We were literally about a week from listing our house, and had already found a house we liked, when my emotions took over.  Maybe it's the fact that I'm very hormonal with this pregnancy (poor, poor Duane), or the fact that I realized none of the houses we looked at had near the character ours does, but I suddenly wanted to stay here.  So, I gave in to my husbands request to contact an architect and see how we could make our house work for our growing family.  After all, a remodel with a toddler and large pregnant belly sounds better than packing everything up, only in turn to unpack it all again in a new home. Yuck.

Today we met with an architect and I couldn't be happier with how it went.  He walked through the house with us and was so positive about the reality of adding a bedroom and playroom, as well as giving us some more living space.  He seemed super thorough, and not one to just plop a room onto our house that doesn't look like it matches.  I'm so, so excited to see the plans he comes up with.  I'm thrilled that we will most likely be able to stay here for at least 5-10 more years, and then hopefully build a house that we love just as much.  When I left my full time job to stay home, I knew there were sacrifices I'd have to make.  Staying in a house with 2 closets may be one of them, but I'm okay with that.  After all, I love this little old house, and can't wait to bring Baby G #2 home here. :)