Another Remodel...

I'm so excited!!!! And I just can't hide it!!!!! Sorry for the Pointer Sisters song just jumping in there but I really am excited! You know how you just wing suggestions out to your hubby, never really expecting him to agree with you much less act on it? Well I did that a few weeks ago and hubby has run with my ideas. What ideas??? REMODELING!!!! When we bought this house, it left A LOT to be desired. It was built in the mid-late 70's and had never really been updated. However, the 25 acres it sits on were fabulous so we bought the house. Thankfully, hubby can build ANYTHING so we have done 95% of the remodeling ourselves. The one area that has completely bugged me is the fact that the front of the house is no longer the front. It used to be but, for some strange reason, the driveway was removed and the back of the house was the only way to comfortably enter the house. Unfortunately, the back door goes right into my kitchen, quite possibly the untidiest room in the house. I am in that room almost all day and it takes a beating. I am also one of those people that cannot stand to have anyone visit my house when it is not spic and span. With the kitchen being the entrance to the house, I cannot simply keep visitors out of that mess so I drive myself nuts trying to keep in presentable. Here is an aerial photo taken late 70's-early 80's showing the drive in the front of the house.

Please excuse the crummy photography! But you can see the drive is in the front. It is no longer there. It has been moved all the way to the right (out of camera shot) so that you drive up and enter right into my kitchen. I casually mentioned to hubby that I wanted to move a wall in the living room and take it all the way to the other side of the house. Our living room is ridiculously small and moving the wall to open the space up would mean that the main part of the house was one big room. If I were cooking, I could still be a part of family activities. Right now, I am tucked away in the kitchen which is only open to the dining room. I never in a million years thought he would agree but HE DID! Then we were discussing how I could put my laundry room in the house (it is currently in hubby's office across the drive) and we were going to close in the porch and make a formal entrance to the house and put in a laundry room. Well, that meant that people would still walk into the house, kitchen first. So I, again, just wing an idea out there. I asked him why we couldn't just add a driveway to the front of the house again and, with the remodel of the living room, make a formal entrance in the new addition? Hubby actually liked the idea! So in a year or two, people might actually be entering here:

Except the front would look a little different with the living room extended across the front of the house. Doesn't it look all pretty with the snow? In the 7 years we have been here, it has only looked like this once! We certainly enjoyed it though. ANYWAY....I may have a normal house someday! Another idea I threw at hubby was adding a 2nd story to tie in with the loft. He very quickly nixed that idea and told me I was nuts. Yeah, probably.

Here's another photo I thought I would throw in just for fun. It's our mama cat, Hobbes sleeping in the bird feeder.  Bad kitty!!!