Tonight we actually agreed on the direction to take our home renovations. Yeah, I think we were both shocked.
We’ve been bouncing back and forth over how best to use the space we have: what rooms to keep, which walls to punch through and where oh where to put a proper bathroom. We’ve got two rooms downstairs, and our giant room upstairs, but neither of us was particularly happy with being too far from Jules – so we’d basically resigned ourselves to living downstairs for a while, in the “guest room” with the tiny, tiny ensuite.
Then tonight we thought – what if we walled in a bit of the verandah at the back? Three stud walls, insulation and flooring and we’ve got ourselves a blank canvas for an awesome little nursery upstairs! We get to stay in our room (and build the ensuite), we can leave the current bathroom mostly alone and we immediately solve half the problem of what to do about the back verandah. Better yet, we could almost have it done before he grows out of his hammock…
At this point everything started coming together. The dark bathroom gets a new window, our laundry becomes a European-style laundry in a cupboard. Downstairs, the front room becomes a study area (floor-to-ceiling bookshelves), opening up the large lounge with a couple of sets of French doors and an extra wide verandah; the guest room gets a makeover, stealing a little space from the study for a better ensuite or built-in robes. No potentially load-bearing walls to knock down, and no sacrificing a bedroom. Upstairs, our balcony ensuite gets a double shower rather than a bath, a walk-in robe and a proper dressing-table. Luxury!
Best of all, none of the work will be “all that hard”. Stud walls? Easy. Plumbing? Not too much for the “expert” to do, so not too much for us to spend. Now we’re both a little buzzed, spinning with ideas and itching to get started, but tomorrow Dee’s promised to finish the painting in my lab – now I’m working out there, it will be nice to hit IKEA and finish it off.