10/29/2019
If you saw my last post, I told you that I was going to start a series of "Problem Solving" posts. I'll tell you the story behind a project, what needed to be solved and some pictures. And since I told you so much about me, what better place to start than with our home. We built our house in 2003. It's a single family home that is attached to my in-law's house. My father in law had been hurt in a construction accident and it appeared as if they would need our help. The county would not let us subdivide the one acre lot nor would they allow us to build a second home onto the lot - but we could build an addition onto the existing house. Can you imagine the challenges that presented? We are less than 1,000 feet away from the Magothy River so we could only cover a certain percentage of the land. Our house had to attach to the existing house and have an interior connecting door. We couldn't block the access to their front door or view from their living room windows. And we certainly didn't want our kitchen and family room to be adjacent to their house for sound purposes. And that was just the beginning! I really don't remember now how long I spent designing our house. Sometimes I got so frustrated I cried and told Charlie I couldn't make it work. Eventually he told me not to show him another kitchen plan until the cabinets were ordered. And we won't even go into how hard the building process was (we lived in a garage for 4.5 months - during a hurricane, and spent every night and weekend swinging a hammer, rolling paint, installing tile etc.) But in the end, we moved into a home that works for us. I spent so long working on our kitchen plan that when we moved in, I knew exactly where to put EVERYTHING because I had worked it out to the last spatula and cake pan. We have a kitchen that allows us both to cook and not get in each other's way while plenty of others hang out. We have a family room that can be closed off from the kitchen so my banging around doesn't disturb people watching tv. There is a full bath on the first floor that has had the bathtub used about 5 times but if my parents need to live with us, they will have a bedroom and bathroom on the first floor. We only have 3 bedrooms on the second floor but since we only have one child (plus a full basement and fully accessible attic/third floor) that was plenty. And that gave us room for the laundry to be upstairs and a large master bath and BIG closet that still makes me happy. So many houses these days have open concept layouts but that didn't work for us. My house might not work for you, you might not like it, but it solved our problems!
I'll attach pictures of the blue prints we started construction with. Not surprisingly, we ended up doing some things differently but that's ok. We love happy accidents! In looking for additional pictures of our house, I realize that I have very few. Apparently taking pictures of my work is not one of my strengths. And one of my kitchen pictures shows a pretty messy eating area. But that's real life. So please don't feel like you need to apologize to me about your messy house when I come over!
Hopefully you enjoyed this little glimpse into my home and the idea for my series of posts. Let me know what you think. And let me know what kind of challenges you have that I can help with!
