Remodeling Blueprints

Since we decided to go to the library and grocery shopping on Friday night, we had a "free" day on Saturday. E didn't have band in the morning, but Josh went to work til lunchtime (where he found that one of his servers had crashed, but he got it up and running again before coming home to eat).

As I think I've mentioned before, Josh's work has a computer program where you can design houses and buildings to scale. Josh had taken all the room measurements beforehand, and we had a pretty good idea of how we wanted our remodeling plans to be, but we still needed to get all the measurements down and see how things looked to scale.

After lunch we all went over to Josh's work. E and G did some homework, and the kids watched a movie and played in the halls while Josh and I spent the afternoon working on the remodeling blueprints. It was fun!

The computer program is pretty awesome because you can view what your plans look like in 3D, complete with furniture even! Josh said he could make a video walk-through of our plans and send it to me, but for now, I can show the 2D blueprints. (None of the plans I'm posting have measurements on them other than the total square footage of the level because we didn't print them with those options for now.)

Our house is a tri-level with an unfinished fourth basement level under the living room and kitchen level.

(Our house last fall)

The washer and dryer are currently in the basement, and we will be keeping them down there. Here is a picture of what we plan on doing.

The bifold door in the boys' room gives access to the back side of the furnace. The stairs go up to the family room level (lower level with walk-out patio doors you can see in the above house photo).

Now for the upstairs ...

Here's the way the bedroom level is currently laid out. (I drew in the bathroom fixtures on this plan at home, so they aren't to scale, but you get the idea.)

Here are our plans for the upper floor. (This time the bathroom fixtures are to scale.)

The door between the master bedroom and master bathroom is a pocket door. It's a bit odd to have 2 windows in the master closet, but we are keeping all the windows in the house as is.

After getting back home and pouring over the plans some more, Josh decided to move the wall separating the master bedroom and master closet into the closet another 6 inches. We'd also like to put a corner electric fireplace in where the master bedroom jogs out toward the master closet.

The funny thing is that we designed the floor plan and then took a look at how many square feet each of the bedrooms would be. Both our bedroom and the girls' room was the exact same size ... 189 sq ft! (Although ours will be a bit bigger now with bumping that closet wall back.) When we took a look at the sq footage for the boys' room, it came out to 188 sq ft! Wow! We couldn't have done that if we'd tried! Funny how they all worked out that way!

Josh still has some tweaking to do to the blueprints, specifically in regard to the electrical plans, before he can submit them to the building inspector to get the needed permits, but he said that he'd like to start by digging the hole for the egress window in the boys' room around May 1.

Master Bed & Bath Remodeling Ideas

The past few days I've been contemplating the colors, style, bedding, and decor for our master bedroom and bathroom when we remodel this summer.

I'm thinking of going with chocolate brown and light blue bedding with brown dominating, painting the walls light blue, and decorating with some pics taken by yours truly turned into sepia tones. The I'd like long white sheers on the windows hanging from a decorative brown iron rod with brown iron "tiebacks" on the wall with blinds or shades on the windows, too. I'd love a hardwood floor, but Josh wants carpet because he thinks the hardwood floors will be too cold. We'll need to get new carpet anyway with the remodeling.

The only thing is that our bedroom furniture is a medium oak. I don't really care for the style anymore. I/we picked out when we first got married, and I know much better what I like now. I'm not sure if the medium oak color will look ok with the chocolate brown. Josh says we're not going to paint it though. And we're not getting new bedroom furniture.

I'm thinking of painting the master bathroom the same blue as the bedroom. The cabinetry, sink, toilet, and shower will be white. I'd love to have large brown slate-look tile on the floor and put a few colored pics of Josh and me at the mountains and beach in WA on the walls in brown frames (wood or metal). I think the blues from the mountains and water will go well with the blue walls. I'm thinking maybe putting a few brown metal hooks or decorative accents on the walls, too.

If anyone has any thoughts, comments, or suggestions, I'd welcome them!

Kid Quote

G reciting his memory work of the 2nd Article of the Apostles' Creed last night ... "I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the version Mary ..."

Happy 85th birthday today to Josh's grandpa!

Cool Rube Goldberg Machine

A New Twist on the Lenten Supper

E rearranged the pepperoni on tonight's pizza to fit with the Lenten season.

Spring is Sneaking In

S's babysitter took her kids and him to the huge greenhouse in the big city today. There was a train exhibit set up there, and the boys liked it.

Temps are consistently in the 40's during the day. Yesterday was sunny and beautiful, but today was really foggy this morning and cloudy the rest of the day. It's supposed to rain for the rest of the week, and, with the above freezing temps, the snow is really melting. Hopefully there won't be much flooding.

I noticed today that my daffodils are sprouting!!!!

It's Time for Another Movie Review Post

• The Taking of Pelham 123 - The premise and plot of this movie were interesting, but the language was awful! I don't think the movie ran more than 5 minutes, maybe 10, without hearing the f word. It was really bad in that respect, and the language was distracting. I wouldn't recommend this movie, mostly because of the language.


• Public Enemies - Honestly, the real reason I chose this movie was because parts of it were filmed in a town in WI that we sometimes drive through, and I thought we'd maybe recognize some things. Well, we did, but the movie wasn't real great. It was slow, and I fell asleep about 3/4 of the way through. Josh told me how it ended, and it doesn't sound like I missed anything worthwhile.


• Star Trek - I'm not a trekkie, and I don't know if I've ever seen a whole episode of the original series (although I have seen some of the subsequent ones). Josh isn't a trekkie either, but he's seen enough Star Trek episodes to get many of the references to the original tv series in this movie and explain them to me. However, even if Josh hadn't been there to share the allusions with me, I think I would have enjoyed this one. I didn't care for the love interest angle or Spock meeting himself, but other than that, it was pretty good.


• The Proposal - A predictable yet sometimes cute and funny movie. Mostly fluff rather than substance. Entertaining, but nothing special. Not for kids.

It's Finally Out!

During this afternoon's Lenten service, F's second, extremely wiggly top tooth fell out. It was about time! Where her first loose top tooth could be rotated practically sideways, this one could swing down almost sideways so that it was only attached on one side.

And since I think kids look so cute with their top two front teeth missing, I've always taken a pic of my kids when they lose both of theirs. Here's F sporting her new toothless look.

Notice the missing tooth on the bottom left next to the middle ones, too. :)

Happy birthday today to my grandma!

Quoting G

Today when we were at Menards, G came out with this:

It's called 'Menards', not 'Womenards'. It's only for men, not women. Women have to get their own 'nards'.

A No-School Monday

There was no school today due to the teachers having meetings at the high school.

I took the kids in to work with me, but I only worked about 3 hrs. Then we went to Cousins for lunch and used a gift card I'd gotten for Christmas. All the kids loved it except for S. He wouldn't eat any of a sub (I was just going to share mine with him.), but he was happy enough to just drink a cup of water with a straw. I made him a pb sandwich when we got home.

I gave G and F their piano lessons today while E practiced her clarinet. Then the girls and I went up to their room and cleaned up a bunch of it. We didn't finish, but got about halfway done.

I also got all of the dark colored valances washed and put back up (except for the one in the boys' room) and dusted the whole house except for the kids' rooms. In fact, the dusting is what sparked the cleaning of the girls' room because I wasn't able to dust anything since everything was covered with toys, projects, papers, etc. The boys' room needs to be cleaned out, too, but I'll get to that.

... And, yes, my kids do clean their own rooms, but their idea of that is usually to shove things under their beds and put the rest of their papers and projects in piles rather than cull through them and toss them or find permanent places for them. The toys do tend to get put away ... or atleast make it to the family room.