The house

A few months ago, Dad told Mark and I and Alli and Jay that we could each "have" some money from his mother's estate. The purpose was to use this money to do something to the house. In other words, it was not to pay bills or buy new clothes. But to use it towards something permanent.

The bummer is that there are SO many things we could do, so it was hard to decide. We finally decided on having our upstairs playroom ceiling raised. We literally had 4 feet in the center of "walkable" space. The sides came down abruptly. One side had sliding doors filled with storage (our only storage in the house). The other side we just lined up toys and TV against the ceiling. Here are two before picture (yes it was a mess). To make the space more interesting, I painted the entire room sky-blue and stenciled sunflowers and a picket fence (on the sliding doors) before Lauren turned 1. My sister helped do the clouds to finish off the room.

The bid for adding a dormer came in within the budget we were given on a Wednesday. The following Monday the construction started.

First, the ceiling was essentially removed. Next, new beams were added on the inside. The frame was built inside the house so when the side wall was removed, the frame could go up quickly. Unfortunately, during some of this process we had snow!

Next the outside siding was put on and then the window was added. Next came the drywall and "mud". Tomorrow starts the texturing of the wall and the priming.

The last things to finish are the lights; the paint; and the desk. Paint has been a pain in the rear. So far, the patchwork of colors I've tried upstairs. Color, to be determined!