Why renovate? Why now?

We moved into our current home nearly five years ago. Prior to that, we lived on a 111-acre property on the Palisades of the Kentucky River. It was beautiful, secluded (our nearest neighbor was over a mile away), and wildlife abounded, but after we had the children, the inconvenience of the long commute and worries about arranging playdates and (in the far-off future) having the children drive narrow and curvy country roads led us, somewhat reluctantly, to decide to move into town.

Once we made up our mind to move, we knew there was only a couple of neighborhoods we wanted to live in with the desired proximity to hubby Jonathan's business and being in the good school district in town. After a few weeks of unsuccessful house-hunting, our realtor found our current house. It's a 1 1/2 story brick building with two large bay windows in front, 3400 square feet, and three bedrooms.

There was a lot we liked about the house. The lot was nice and large, one of the largest lots you can find in this part of town. The street was very quiet and tree-lined. The neighbors are terrific. Not a yipping dog on the street. It was in walking distance of Jon's office and biking distance of mine. A Kroger is a couple of blocks away. The master bedroom is simply HUGE, and I have yet to see a master closet that is bigger than ours. So we bought the house for $435,000 (below its appraisal value of $465,000) and moved.

After we moved in and had lived there for a while, we started to notice some of the downsides of the house. First, while three bedrooms seemed adequate when we were searching, the lack of a guest room is disconcerting for our visitors, whom we resign to the (finished) basement on an air mattress. Second, while in theory it seems like there should be no problem for our two children to share a bathroom, the reality is a different matter, and complaints of "Athena stinks!" and "Isaac left his clothes in the bathroom again!" quickly wear thin. Third, we have no laundry room. The washer and dryer are located in a closet in the hallway connecting the kitchen with the garage. I did not initially think this was a problem and in fact was happy that I didn't have to trudge down to the basement to wash our clothes. But it has turned out to be a royal pain in the butt. The doors to the laundry closet are the fold-out kind, and if I have the laundry closet open, the door from the garage bangs into it and cannot be opened. I cannot tell you how many times my family waits until the precise second I'm loading the dryer to decide to come into the house from the garage, with much banging and disgruntled feelings on both sides. Not to mention that the washer and dryer are very noisy when running.

So while we still loved the house and loved the street/neighborhood even more, we also had dissatisfactions with our current layout and were pretty much continually seriously or semi-seriously thinking about either moving again or renovating.

Since we moved in, we have in fact already done two smaller renovations. Our master bath (in surprising contrast to the bedroom and closet) was very cramped, dark, and had only a bathtub/shower combo with floppy shower curtains. I am a shower person and hate floppy shower curtains. So I made it a condition of buying the house that we would almost immediately renovate the master bath, which we did. We put in a skylight that made it much nicer and less cramped seeming, and we tore out the bathtub and replaced it with a large tile shower with glass doors, which also made it seem bigger. I was thrilled with how it turned out, Jonathan less so, because he wasn't prepared for the maintenance involved with glass doors. Turns out you have to squeegee them down each and every time you use the shower to prevent water spots and hard water deposits from forming. I do not cut Jon any slack in squeegee duties, so he was very much interested in getting a new shower that does not involve glass doors. (We're opting for what's called a "walk behind shower" that doesn't have a door at all... more on that, later.)

The second renovation we did was the kitchen, finished recently. The previous owners had installed rather hideous looking wallpaper with huge blotchy maroon, gold, and green flowers on it, and a no-doubt-about-it hideous light fixture with about a dozen tiny maroon pleated lampshades. The cabinets were okay but nothing special, and the Corian countertop had multiple stains and scratches. We had already bought new stainless steel appliances when we moved, so for this renovation we got new cabinets, new granite countertops, a really fancy big sink and stylish faucet, replaced the hideous wallpaper with nice, simple pale green paint, and got a new light fixture. That renovation had its own problems, which I may or may not get into later, but the kitchen looks glorious now (see pics below), and that's all that matters.





When we bought the house, the previous owners casually mentioned at the closing that they had in fact contemplated remodeling to add a first floor master/laundry suite, and they left a floor plan they had come up with but then abandoned, opting instead to move. (I refuse to think very long or hard about WHY they decided to move instead of renovating.) During the process of the kitchen renovation, we mentioned our desire for a first-floor master and laundry room to John Wagner, our contractor, showed him the rough plan the previous owner had come up with and asked him, somewhat idly, how feasible something like that would be. In classic foot-in-the-door style, he said, "Why don't you let me take this and see what would I can do with it? It won't cost much to draft a few plans." So we thought, why the heck not?, and started the process that would lead us to this mammoth undertaking.