Hey hey! Well, it’s dream time. Dream being the key word, as we look into this further. ;) But it’s fun to think about and I love reading stuff like this so I wanted to share.
Our house is a great size. Not massive, but plenty big for us. I mentioned in this post about building our house that we often wish we had more space in the areas we use most. Those areas being the family room and kitchen – everywhere else we are golden.
I’ve had this idea in my head for years now. Probably five at least – at first it was just daydreaming (back in the days when we were drowning in $125K in debt). Over the past couple of years I’ve considered it even more – but we’ve never acted on it. Of course over time I had to kind of introduce the idea to my husband – sly-like so he wouldn’t freak out. ;)
But he was actually quite into the idea and goodness, that gets me in trouble. When he’s on board I’m full steam ahead.
So years ago I shared a floor plan of our kitchen and family room – I don’t share many other floor plans of the house for security reasons. It kind of weirds me out you know? But this space has always been one we’ve struggled with, so back when we were buying our sectional I shared this:
The family room isn’t a bad size at all, especially since we moved the TV to the wall on the bottom. Makes a HUGE difference:
But the windows and that corner (curses!!) fireplace make it so that this is genuinely the only way to set up the room and have it function. Over the years I’ve found myself thinking if we only had a few more feet…it would make a huge difference.
The table area in the kitchen is tight. It’s a little better since I changed out the tables from a round to a rectangle, but if the chairs are pulled out you can’t walk around the table or get out the back door. It’s just tight. I am SO thankful we had the bay window put in!
We love to entertain but the longer we’ve lived here the less we’ve done of it because the space is just not conducive to having a lot of people comfortably. (We do use the patio a lot!) But it’s not really even about that – we just wanting a little more space to live. My boy is getting bigger and as our family grows (grandson and six siblings getting married and having kids) we’d love to be the hub for family events.
So. A plan was created in my head. One night I finally went out with a measuring tape and starting figuring it all out:
Sigh. It looks so simple here – if only that was the case. :)
That area in the white is all deck. We want to bump out the kitchen area about six feet. My dream project within this dream project? This:
It would go perfectly in that spot and would look just. like. this. :)
The middle part would be an extension of the family room with lots of windows. I originally planned to maybe move the fireplace to the end of that space like this:
It was actually this photo that I found a few months back that made the hubby say “Let’s do it.”:
Those are magical words.
But since then, after talking with a few people and considering the flow outside, I’ve changed my mind on that. The fireplace would stay on the wall it’s currently on and would direct vent out the roof. But no. more. corner. fireplace. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of a huge long wall with nothing on it – it needs something to ground it and we would need an easy way to get to the patio.
I do want the pitched roof though. Perhaps with faux wood beams down the line or beadboard:
And lots and lots of windows like my friend Julia has in her sunroom:
Hers are extra big – I love them. We would stick with the standard windows we have in the house but I’d want a lot of them.
It looks amazing right? It’s all planned out in my head. What I didn’t have planned was the cost – I had a number in my head and so far it’s been blown out of the water. Like, torpedoed. :)
A friend added on a large sunroom/family room a few years back (actually more square feet than this would be) and it was totally reasonable as far as cost. Same pitched roof, lots of windows. But so far the numbers we’re getting (very rough) are triple that. Whut?
The large numbers are coming from rough estimates over the phone though – we’ve had two contractors come out who are putting together actual hard numbers. I have NO idea what they’ll come back with – seriously no clue. I thought I had an idea of what it would cost and so far that’s not panning out.
We would pay cash for this project so who knows if it will happen. At this point it’s looking like no. And the whole thought of my house being a total and complete disaster for weeks on end is starting to hit me too – I don’t know if I have it in me. :) For real.
Have you (or anyone you know) ever done a project like this? I’d love any advice. Was it astronomical? Was it worth it? Did you go rocking in a corner during the process?
If any local (Indy area) folks know of a reasonable contractor I’d love their name. Feel free to leave it in the comments or email me. I’m not going to get a ton of quotes but if someone has a great resource I’d love to check into it. And I’ll keep you updated on this and let you know what we decide of course! Right now it’s looking like it probably won’t happen but I refuse to give up just yet. :)
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