You had me at bigger closet

Question:What do you do when the house you live in suddenly doesn't seem big enough but you don't really want to move?

Context: We live in an amazing neighbourhood! Our house is on a corner lot so we have a decent size property. Our next door neighbour plows the snow off our driveway in the winter. Our back-up babysitter for when relatives aren't available lives across the street...yup, that's right, I said across the street (so convenient for driving her home! I'm kidding, we don't actually drive her...she's  drives herself). My son's school is also on the same street so we can walk him to and from school everyday. My husband has a mere 7-minute walking commute to work, which means he can come home for lunch when he's working at the office. Oh, and did I mention that we love our neighbours! And isn't that one of the biggest gambles about moving - you don't always know what your new neighbours are going to be like.

Needless to say, we have no plans of moving. So what to do?

Answer: You put an addition on your house! Or in our case, you put an upstaris addition on your house!

Awesome!

Initially we were going to finish our unfinished basement. Right now it is one big room that is our laundry room/guest room/playroom/storage room/office (mine). Besides being a tad creepy down there with all the spider webs that seem to so quickly accumulate (regardless of the number of times they get vacuumed up), it is also friggin cold! How cold? Picture me working in my office wearing a parka and a toque (for my American friends that would be a winter hat).

Then we started toying around with the idea of putting a room above our garage. A few phone calls later and we found ourselves sitting down with Bob the Builder (no joke that really is his name) and later checking with the bank to see if it really was possible (which it was). The plan was to make one big room and have it serve as both my office and the guest room.

The really exciting part came when we sat down with the builder and the architect and we discovered that we could expand the room at the front and the back and that our one big room was now going to be TWO big rooms. Not only that, but one of the rooms was going to be bigger than our current master bedroom! And if you are thinking what I'm thinking - then we're both thinking that there needs to be a little room shuffling going on.

For me it gets even better - I will finally have a decent size closet!!!

You don't understand.

This is my current closet.

Correction: this is my current closet that I have to share with my husband. (I can just sense the jealousy...no wait, my mistake, that's pity)

This, by the way, is my oldest son, Theo. He insisted on being in the picture - he also graciously demonstrates just how small our closet is. The top shelf is all of my husband's stuff since it is too high up for me to easily reach (seems the original builder thought it would be funny to pick on short people - stop laughing tall people).

Now that we've designed the rooms the way we want them, the next step is for the architect to make final sketches and then the builder has to apply for a permit. Once the permit is acquired - the renovating begins! (The builder thinks that should be in about 2 weeks time!)

That being said, along with all the other NEW stuff that is going to be happening in my life over the next year, I thought I would document our house renovations as well with pictures of the before, during and after. And when it's all finished, you can all come for a visit! (okay stop packing, I was just kidding)

So here is our cute little house as it looks right now:

The front view

The back view