Why We're Remodeling

It's time.

We've been living in our house for nearly 14 years. It's time that it finally fit our family's needs.

The location is amazing, the neighborhood unbeatable. And we love the charm of our older home.

What we don't love is that there is no bathroom on our first floor. There's only one actual bathroom in the whole house. (There is a toilet and sink in our laundry room downstairs, but they don't count as a bathroom, according to the appraiser.)

Did I mention that in less than a month our first-born will be a teenager? She is already up to 45-minute shower/private time in the bathroom, God help us if she begins wearing make up.

We don't love the cramped kitchen, where the main traffic pattern through the house goes straight past the stove.

Oh, the stove. Did I mention that there is no countertop space next to it? If I need to take a lid off a pot to stir some spaghetti sauce I take the chance of whacking a family member in the face with it as I search for a flat surface to place it. You can often hear "hot pan coming through!" during dinner prep. And I can't open the oven door if someone has the fridge door open -- they collide.

It's time.

For years Wayne and I have sat on our patio in the summer, looking at the back of the house and dreaming. What if we expanded the kitchen? What if we expanded the bathroom upstairs? What if...what if?

And now, we find those "what ifs" becoming reality. We are in disbelief that we are actually doing this, even as I look out at a new crawl space and framing wood stacked neatly in our backyard, about to become our addition.

"Where am I supposed to poop?" thinks Beauty.

Best of all, we are incorporating parts of our history into our home. One wall of our kitchen will be adorned with wood from Wayne's grandfather's barn, the original homestead of the Horsman family. We hope to fill the walls in the dining room with photos of the Upper Peninsula, where I spent many a summer as a child.

We cannot wait until it's all complete. But, we get to live through the middle part. Marissa will have to bunk with Lindsey for about two months. We will be without a kitchen for about that amount of time. Hopefully it'll be grilling weather most of that time.

Somehow I think we'll survive as a family; we've got our eye on the prize.

The Closest I'll Come to Camping...I Think

Our tub has been needing to get re-glazed for some time -- the last glaze job, which was guaranteed for 5 years, was completed five years ago and had officially begun flaking off. Big time. I made an appointment to have it re-glazed on Thursday, July 1st, their first available appointment. They would let themselves into our house and get it started, I would leave work around 2 pm and work from home until they were done so that I could inspect the final project and pay for the work.

Then I had a training come up for work that was from 2-4 pm on Thursday, so I had to re-schedule the glaze job. Any chance they could squeeze it in Friday before the holiday weekend?

Absolutely, they said. Only problem was, I forgot that it takes 48 hours for the glaze to cure during which period you cannot use the tub. This now means it won't be usable until Sunday night.

Did I mention it's the ONLY tub or shower in our entire house?

Did I mention that the forecast called for 90 degree heat with 60 or 70 percent humidity?

Did I mention that we were around our house all weekend, doing all kinds of activites? Things like watching a parade...

Or watching same parade from under a parasol, due to the heat...

Or walking down to Lake Harriet...

Or wondering at the Lake Creature at said lake...

Or dipping toes into said lake to cool at least the tootsies off...

...or picnicking at the lake...

...the list goes on and on.

All without benefit of a tub to shower or bathe in. The tub was looking so inviting, too, so sparkly and shiny white.

Marissa and I got a brief respite by going to a city park that has a water area called the Splash Pad. It was filled with all kinds of fountains and curtains of water that you could run through. Saturday night she and I went go bed feeling slightly refreshed and not quite as sticky, but Lindsey's face had a film of sweat and three days worth of sunscreen on it. You could smell the old sunscreen smell if you got close to her; don't even get me started on how the adults fared.

Finally, Sunday evening we could finally use the tub, and I was the first one to shower. Aahhhh! It felt so good to get clean! I had an inkling of what it feels like to come home after a week of tent camping, with the only way to wash off being a dip in the lake. No thank you, not for me. I could barely stand it being around my own house when I had access to good water everywhere, just not in the form I wanted.

We now have our tub back, all happy and sparkly new. And we had a fabulous 4th of July weekend to boot, with the lack of bathing just adding to the adventures of the weekend.