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!

Rethinking Remodeling Plans

Josh and I have been planning to finish our basement this summer, adding 2 additional bedrooms down there. Before getting our building permit, Josh had to contact someone with our county's planning dept and get their approval first because we have a septic system. In doing so, he found that the number of bedrooms our house has determines the size of septic system we are required to have. Due to the size of our septic system, we can only have 3 bedrooms in our house. If we want to add more, we have to put in a bigger septic system. Ironically, we can add more bathrooms with our current septic system. (How much sense does that make?!)

We need the bedroom room. The boys are okay in their room now, but it's tight, and as they grow older, we will definitely need more room for them.

Even though the plan was for E and J to each have their own room in the basement, G and S to share upstairs, and F to have her own room upstairs, it looks like we will have to stay with a boys' room and a girls' room.

So now, the plan we're considering is to remodel the whole upstairs so that the 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom up there are turned into 2 larger bedrooms with 1 regular bathroom and 1 master bathroom. Then, the 2 bedrooms we were planning to put in the basement will turn into 1 large bedroom for the boys.

We were all disappointed in learning that we couldn't do what we'd been planning for quite a while, but we can't put in a new septic system and add the bedrooms. It's one or the other. Although the revisions we're considering will still cost more than our initial plans, they're still more feasible than dealing with the septic system.

Last night Josh and I played around with layouts and plans, measuring things, etc., and trying to come up with a way that we could get things to work. I think we've got about half of it worked out, but Josh needs to play around with some kind of program they have at his work that can draw up accurate building plans.

Just Stuff

Last night Josh and I watched Echelon Conspiracy. It was alright, a bit confusing at times. It reminded me a bit of War Games, one of Josh's favorite movies, but he didn't really care for this one.

I left this morning to stop at work and do a few things before returning some things to the library and going grocery shopping.

R left for Mom and Dad's today, but she'll be back again next week for a couple of nights.

Last night and today I've also been working on our budget and entering receipts and stuff.

G went to JK's house today to play for a while in the late morning and early afternoon.

Josh and the kids have been emptying out a bunch of stuff from the basement into the family room. Some weatherization people are going to be coming to our house to seal some of the areas around the house's foundation, and they have to be able to get at where the insulation is where the basement's ceiling and walls meet.

Now all the lumber we had in the basement to finish it with is in the family room along with dressers and lots of other stuff we had stored down there. I think this is also spurring Josh on to move ahead with finishing the basement.

Day 124 of 365

The new garage door

Demolition

Our old garage door was a wooden one that was falling apart. A couple of weeks ago we ordered a new one from Menard's. We got the call that it was in, and Josh went to pick it up. Then he set to work on taking down the old door.

J loves to help Josh, and here they both are hard at work.

(Day 123 of 365)