Addition

I have mentioned quickly in previous posts that we are adding onto our house. What are we adding, you may ask? Well, my kids were sad when I told them it would not be an extra bedroom for one of them. Brayden and Blaine share a room now (and have since Blaine was in a crib) and the only place to add on because of the septic system is at our kitchen.

I do not want to smell boys from my kitchen table.

No offense to my boys and all.

We are extending our kitchen out a few feet and past that will be a sewing/crafting room for me! ME ME ME! Well, we are also moving our laundry room there also.

For me me me. No exclamation point at the end of that one.

But I am excited about my laundry room, if you can get excited about that! Right now my "laundry room" is behind folding doors in my kitchen. That is where I hang everything that can't be dried all the way. Including bras and jock straps. Yeah. I am excited about that hanging out of eye sight when we are eating dinner. That will be awesome.

Our existing laundry "closet" is going to become my pantry. And the existing pantry that not only holds non-perishables also holds my trash can, which I have to close the folding doors on, turn sideways, hold my mouth just right, push people out of the way if they are at the table, and slide through to throw something away, will become a desk area. Which means my trash can sits smack dab in the middle of the kitchen floor a lot. Especially if I am cooking. In fact, Stephen has teased me about that.

First of all, if it (the trash can) for some crazy reason is actually in the pantry, the family will ask where the trash can is and then give me funny looks when I tell them it's in the pantry. Secondly, Stephen has been known to walk in the kitchen and throw something in the middle of the floor, acting like he didn't notice the trash can actually has a home of it's own....in the pantry.

So back to my existing pantry that is going to become a desk area. Even though we have a kitchen table that holds 8 people, that is obviously not enough room to separate 2 kids while they do homework. And it won't be long before that will be 3 kids doing homework! The end of where the desk area will be, will end behind my new laundry room and we have decided to put a closet for clean, needing to be ironed, clothes. Right now that has hung on the door to our master bedroom closet and I iron when I can't get through. It has worked for us, but in a very annoying way.

Here are some photos of the progress:


Patio area before

Kitchen area before
Ghetto fabulous door that I helped Stephen install when I was "big pregnant" with Bryson and have yet to paint
Now, before I get any comments on how mean we are to have our 13 year old help bust up the patio, the kids were chomping at the bits to use power tools. They are boys.....enough said.


This is what was scooped out of where the room will be. What is left of it after we level the dirt around the room has been promised as a pitchers mound. All the boys are excited about that!

This is the sand that was used by the mason guys. AKA torture for a 4 year old.

This is the framing for the patio that we almost tripled. This is going to be awesome in the summers and when we have youth group activities!
The concrete "Moat" around the boys' "island".
The concrete blocks set and part of the brick that had to be laid before we leveled off the patio area.

The new patio area

After gravel was leveled out by us.....Mom, Dad, Stephen, me and Bryson. I don't know how I took all these pictures and didn't seem to get most of the "helpers" in them.
Once again....kids and power tools. This is Blaine packing down the patio dirt with a compactor thingy. He also loved using the hand held jackhammer thingy that we used to take off the brick. We saved and cleaned as much of that as we could without breaking it. Our brick isn't available anymore so we are reusing as much as possible and mixing it in with another brick that was as close as possible to what we had.

A good bit more has been done but I haven't gotten out there with the camera yet and this is turning into a pretty lengthy post so I will post some more later!

Sara