Back together again

I should have taken some "before" photos so you could see what a transformation has taken place at our house. This is actually the finished product! Yea! And the reason I haven't blogged for a week (or so). Back in March, Paul and I decided we needed more space on our upper level. Since the missionaries moved into our basement, 1/3 of the house has become unavailable to us on a daily basis. #1, that is where I kept my treadmill which we had to move into an upper level bedroom which #2 then resulted in losing our "guest room".

When we built our "new" home 15 years ago, we had a large balcony built that we could access from our bedroom on the upper level. But over the years we have realized that we seldom actually went out there and enjoyed it like we thought we would. So last March we decided to close it in and have the space become usable space to us on a daily basis rather than just used a few random times a year.

We hired the man who did the original framing of our house 15 years ago. He thought it was a smallish project... would only take 3 to 4 weeks!! "Let's do it!" By the time he got our city to approve the building permit, we were leaving for China in a couple of days (that was back in May). We were gone to China for 3 weeks. We thought we'd come home to a finished project. It has ONLY taken a mere 6 more weeks --- but it got finished this week!! and it was definately worth waiting for!

Here is Paul's office (before it was completely finished) which has gained about 10' x 12'. This is where we will use his stationary bike and my treadmill. It also makes his office feel a lot more open. The whole space, opposite the bike in the photo, is what was the outdoor balcony area.

Here is the additional space that was added on to our bedroom. You can see the "foot print" of the former wall which was a bay window shape. It didn't add that much more footage -- about 4' at the most but it made the room rectangular shape instead of bay window shape and that alone makes it feel more spacious.

So for the past 6 - 8 weeks we have had total chaos in this upper level where we usually spend most of our time. Everything in Paul's office and our bedroom has been shoved into my sewing room and the spare bedroom and bathroom and it has been impossible to find anything! Last weekend when we went to the cabin for the 4th of July, I had to pack my clothes in a laundry basket!! We moved our king size mattress downstairs into the living room and that has been our bedroom for the past 2 weeks! A week ago the new carpet was laid EXCEPT for on the staircase (the guy mismeasured) and we have been walking precariously up and down stairs with only tack stripes and bare wood.

I have spent this whole week reorganizing and cleaning all the upstairs rooms, hence no computer time! There is only one problem that I have discovered with this whole updating process... it makes everything else look "needy". Now I have a few more projects on my "to-do" list. I'm afraid these things never end!