Of course, it should surprise NO ONE that we’ve encountered a few of those ‘it’s now or never’ opportunities along the way. We’re thankful we HAVEN’T encountered any budget-breaking issues, like an incomplete foundation or severe structural deficiencies, which has allowed us to do a couple small things (cost-wise) that have big quality-of-life impacts.
First, as I alluded to in this post, we raised the roof in the workout room!
The new windows were in the scope of work, demoing the ceiling was not.
However, this little add-on already has me on cloud nine. Not only does it make the room seem SO MUCH BIGGER, it solves my putting-a-dumbbell-though-the-ceiling problem. With only seven-foot ceilings up here (#oldhouseproblems), I have to be really careful whenever I lift a weight above my head, whether I’m on or off the bike. Andrew and I have talked about taking down the ceiling ourselves, but without knowing what was above it, we were hesitant to begin. Demoing plaster and lath is no joke.
So, when they took out the ceiling in our closet (you can see through to it from the workout room, above) and revealed that it was ALSO a peak over the workout room, it was almost a no brainer. Yes, please take a little more of my money to fix this major problem AND take care of the mess. I literally could not call our contractor fast enough.
The second ‘extra’ that may end up having one of the biggest impacts of the entire project is the creation of a space that will allow us to build one of those cool cubby/locker/bench things. (I do not know what to call them but you know what I mean.) Andrew and I love how they look (you know I love some good storage!) but we’ve never had a space in the house for anything like that. Our back door used to have a traditional coat closet, and we demoed that thinking we’d replace it with a bench and some hooks, while largely sticking to the original footprint, which was small.
One day, Andrew had a crazy idea: take out one of our windows along that back wall, which would allow us to build a larger ‘mudroom’ area and actually have the space for shoe storage and the benches we want. So we did.
You can see where the window had been (plywood), and where the old coat closet sat (tile). The back entry really wasn’t very large at all, and because it will become our main entry to the house after the project, we really wanted to make that a more functional space. Our goals were to widen the entry space, as well as the ‘hall’ as you walk from the back into the living room. You can see the new framed wall is further into the living room, and doesn’t extend as far into the ‘hall’ as the tile does (only by a few inches).
You can’t tell in this photo, but we also had the contractors truncate the corner of the wall on the right (above) as you walk into the living/kitchen area. It was a regular corner, but Andrew and I had always talked about cutting the corner off to create a diagonal that would ease your entry into the space. Again, so glad we opted to have them do that–it’s a small thing that will make a big impact every day.
We plan to build (or purchase) an L-shaped bench/cubby unit for this entryway, but leave the right side open. With the way the living room is set up, there was a lot of wasted space behind the existing coat closet, and I’m so thrilled we stole a bunch of it for this back entry. The room will literally feel like the exact same size, and it may just make us update those back windows sooner rather than later…
Lastly, remember when we built the built-ins for our TV room? Well, sometime after that we (I say ‘we,’ Andrew did just about all of this one!) built this corner unit but I never blogged about it. The short story is we found an empty cavity in our kitchen peninsula, bought a wine fridge to put there, and then built this shelf/cubby storage unit to complete the space. I used to store my dutch ovens on the shelves.
From almost the beginning of the project (so, YEARS ago), both Andrew and the architect were willing to let this shelf unit go for the sake of the design. I was adamant it stay, for a variety of reasons. It matches our built-ins in the TV room, we worked so hard on it, where else will I store my dutch ovens?! So, I held on with a firm grip, and it didn’t really negatively affect our plans.
Fast-forward a few years and a start date, and Andrew finally got through to me. Once the kitchen and dining rooms were demoed and I could stand in the space, he put me at my ‘new’ sink (imaginary at this point) and had me look through to the TV room and view to the backyard. Guess what was in the way? The dang dutch oven shelves!
He won me over pretty quickly after that and he demoed them that weekend. Gone!
I was a tiny bit sad for about a millisecond, but quickly realized it was the right thing to do. It opens up the space, and our options, so much.
Speaking of options… Spoiler alert: Andrew and I are *talking* about turning the existing TV room into a dining room (!!!), which would then force us to move the couch to where my desk is currently (literally the only place in our house where we can put a television), which then means my desk (or, a desk) needs a home, which would conveniently fit right where our dining table was SUPPOSED to go in our existing plans.
The truth is, our TV room has always been sub-par, and always will be sub-par. Even with all this work opening up the space, it likely still won’t allow us to put any seating with more than two spots facing the TV. (We currently have a sectional.) It’s just kind of a long and narrow room. Yes, the project makes it better by removing the kitchen peninsula that separated the TV room from the kitchen, but the TV room doesn’t get any bigger. (Technically, it gets smaller because of the new back entryway!) Conversely, Andrew and I have talked over the years about turning our TV room into a dining room, since we’d love to have a large table and the long, narrow shape of the room (and bank of windows with the view to the backyard!) lends itself well to a dining room. Additionally, we don’t watch that much TV, so moving it to a smaller space in the house isn’t really that big of a deal. There are only three of us, and how often do we ALL watch something at the same time? Almost never. However, how often do we have people over and struggle to find enough seating? Literally every time. Lastly, I’d like to think that philosophically our family values community/family/hospitality over TV-watching. (We do.)
If we choose NOT to move the TV room, it means we’ll never have more than about a six-person table, which kinda sounds terrible. Yes, we’ll have stools at the island nearby, but we’ll never be able to seat another family at the table with us, and that doesn’t sound like what we want long term.
Thankfully, other than wiring an additional center light in the TV room (for a future light above a table), this switcheroo doesn’t have an impact on the design or work our contractors are doing. We’ll likely play musical furniture for a bit after we move in to figure out if we want to relocate the couch and TV. More to come on that!
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