The renovation of renovations

Whew. 

Did you hear that? That was me trying to catch my breath. 

SO much has been happening....we had a fantastic trip to celebrate the Coach turning 50. 

IT might have been one of the best trips we've had....it certainly was the longest we've ever had. 

12 days. 

12.

Not too long though; it was perfect. Except for my struggling for breath; I'll share that with you at another time. 

But first, tell me, do you like what we've done with our place?

 A good amount of the time and $ has been put into reinforcing the truss system to make sure our roof stayed up since we took out a load bearing wall.  Details, ya know. 

 Did we make the house larger? Naaah,  only added about 100 square feet; stole it from the lanai. 

 Our bedroom literally has NO privacy right now. We didn't even want to do anything to our room, but the way the walls lined up, we had to move the wall out about 5 inches, so therefore....

 The goal for this renovation was to remove interior walls and ditch the small, unused, chopped up rooms and make it all one large useable space. A true great room. 

 We're living comfortably in the back of the house. A temporary door was put in the hallway for my safety. Ok, maybe it was to keep the workers safe from me. "YOU'RE TAKING TOO MANY SMOKE BREAKS. I NEED MY HOUSE FINISHED!"

These pics here, well I took them about a year ago when we started discussing this renovation....just so you know that I didn't bring Ozzie boy back from the garden. 

The generously sized kitchen, small breakfast nook and small family room. 

Same from kitchen view.

The small formal dining area

Side of small formal dining area looking into really small formal living room. (after the movers took our stuff)

I actually had the forethought to do two small videos of the area just before the movers came....you can hear them knocking on the door in one of them. 

The Coach and I struggled with the idea of downsizing. Honestly, we don't need all this space, but the idea of having to start over with another place was overwhelming. We love our home. (of course, I curse the maintenance of it on occasion) and we absolutely love our property; this can't be duplicated. So, we decided to make the house more livable and more valuable for when the time comes to sell. 

If you ask the girls; this house won't ever be sold to strangers. Apparently, they think we are just going to give it to them. HA. 

So, Thanksgiving will not be held at our house...only so much cooking I can accomplish in the temporary digs. Christmas? Well, we'll see about that one. 

I hope to catch up with all you good people soon.

XOXO