Construction Starts / Week 2

It's been quite some time since the last significant posting, and most of that was due simply to busy schedules at work, and lots of options / choices personally that distracted me from sitting down on a regular basis and sharing my story. Nothing has really changed with any of that, but we did actually settle on one of the nebulous 'options', and we're fully engaged in adding on to our house.

Katie and I have always talked about adding on, but never really had the opportunity to give it serious thought, nor did we actually really need any more room, until this year. But things change, of course, and this year we decided that we either needed to move to a bigger house or add on. Several builders told us that the house was a tear-down, given the prices in the neighborhood, so we started looking around for a bigger house, and actually put ours on the market. From that experience, it became clear that the best thing going for us in the whole deal was actually our own house. When we really got the info we needed and sifted through the details, it was obvious that if we could build on, we should.

As luck or fate would have it, a builder was working on a house one block over that was almost a spot-on duplicate of what we had in mind for our house. Long story short, we worked with him (Mike H) to put together a plan and budget that we took to the bank. Financing was finalized at the beginning of the month, and we're in our second week of major renovations.

So major, in fact, that we actually moved out of the house totally. But not far. Again, luck or fate shined on us: we are living in a duplex 5 houses down from ours, on the same street! Through all of this, I have to say, I feel the hand of God at work for us. I couldn't have planned how this has worked out -- but it has exceeded our wildest imagination as to what we could do for our family. If you told me 6 years ago that we'd be doing this, I could not have believed it. We're blessed.

And for the next six months, we'll be watching as the crew tears the top off our house and adds a second floor. Our 2 / 1.5 cottage for newlyweds will turn into a 4 / 3 for a family with two growing boys. We also get a new kitchen, boys get a lounge room, visitors get a guest-room, and Katie gets a utility room in the house!

Last week they did some basic demolition of the kitchen and parts of the outside siding, so that they could get in to inspect / enhance the foundation. They finished the foundation over the weekend, and this week started demolishing the chimney to make room for the staircase. Today, the whole chimney and fireplace were gutted and you could see through from the living room to the kitchen via the hole where the fireplace used to be. There's a dumpster in the driveway that will be full of parts of our house by next week.

It's scary, it's exciting, and it's only going to get more so as the project goes on. Ups and downs -- for sure. Wish us luck!