The last year in a snapshot.....

As I sit here and think about the footings being poured I am reminded about much we did in the last year.

On most days I can't even comprehend how much work we've done so with that said let me take you down memory lane.....

Nov. 22nd, 2012 - decide to take old house off market and build an addition.

Feb. 25th, 2013 - a post to remind myself to keep going, the midway point, the long working days in the dead of winter were wearing on me. 

June 17th, 2013 - time to celebrate, summer was here and the addition to the old home was done! 

July 2nd, 2013 - we took a little break and enjoyed ourselves. 

(photo credit here!!!) 

Aug. 19th, 2013 - the dream garage!!!!! This was our pride and joy project, 2 months of hard work and lots of laughs. We were so close....

Nov. 4th, 2013 - then this happened and it was the most horrible weekend we could have ever imagined. It still makes me sad to think about it. 

Nov. 13th, 2013 - we learned you need to stand tall and be proud of everything you have done, that when disaster happens you band together and move forward, so we did.

Nov. 18th - the additions to the "forever home" start. More to come on this next week....but here is a little preview. 

You can see our lives our not perfect things don't always go the way we want them to but we figure it out.

Before & After Floor Plan - Forever Home

The "Forever Home" has been the hot topic in our house the last week! We are in the process of having all of our permits approved and ready to start some digging this weekend!

Branko and I have been working on our layout and how we would want certain rooms to look. I was lucky enough to find this free online floor planner to help me out!

First here is look at how the upper floor looked prior to us making any changes:

Things that drove me completely crazy about this floor plan was the main entrance that walked straight into the kitchen or down the stairs, no closet space for shoes or coats, the main bathroom that was in the middle of the living room, the closed off partition wall that separated the dining room from the living room, the small kitchen with no dishwasher.


Here is a look at the new plan:

As you can see the house is now much larger since we are adding 2 additions to each end of the house.

The new entrance will allow room to move the powder room and stairs. This leaves more space for the dining room area and a new small pantry in the kitchen. The new entrance will also have closets and coat racks and a space to stack wood for the winter.

We created a very open concept living space by removing the partition wall between the dining and living room space, the kitchen has been made larger by removing the existing bathroom and extending the kitchen into that space which allows us to have a fully open concept area, a hallway was made between the bedroom and 1 bedroom was removed and turned into a bathroom, a closet was added in one of the smaller bedrooms.

The other addition is the master bedroom en-suite. This will have a full 4 piece bathroom with standing shower, free standing tub, double sink vanity and toilet. A spacious walk in closet will be situated beside the bathroom. The area for the bed is quite large, we will have enough room for some extra seating.

We have also changed the deck layout as it will no longer wrap the front of the house and will only sit in front of the French doors.

What do you think?????? Anything suggestions on something we should change? Do you use a floor planner?



PS: I also just wanted to send out a BIG Thank you to everybody who sent such kind thought about the garage and the family passing. It was a rough week but we have managed to move on think about the Forever Home plans!

When disaster strikes....Dream Garage Update

If you have been following along you would know that lately all I have been talking about is the dream garage, I wrote about it here and here.

I had a great weekend planned, spending time with a friend Friday night and then Saturday morning heading to my parents place to spend the day with my mom and a little shopping trip to Buffalo.

We made it to Buffalo but no more than 20 min. into the shopping trip I received this horrible message from Branko: 

"Storm has flattened the garage" 

It couldn't be I thought, maybe the roof or plywood was ripped off. But no the entire garage was completely flattened.

The back wall buckled from the force of the wind once it fell backwards it pulled the front wall down and then the roof come straight down. 

We quickly picked up what we needed and headed home. My drive home from my parents is roughly 1 hour and 30 min. It's safe to say I cried almost the entire way home.

Big fat wet ugly sobbing tears. 

I get it, it's just a garage. Nobody was hurt but I couldn't stop thinking about the long hours of work we put into that garage.

This section is the worse part as it sits dangerously and will be the toughest to get apart.

Standing from further away the front wall is sitting on the ground almost like somebody just pushed it over. 

At the end of the weekend we also received some devastating news about a family member passing away and it put all of this in perspective, the garage destroyed didn't matter so much anymore. You can take pieces of wood apart and put them back together but when life is taken from you so suddenly you cannot have that back.




Please note none of the quotes are my own and were all selected from my saved quotes pinterest board randomly found on pinterest. (http://www.pinterest.com/danica19/quotes/)